Early+Release+for+Collaboration+or+PD


 * Brad Willson, Director of Curriculum, Leavenworth USD 453**

I would appreciate hearing from those of you who have “early release” days for PLCs or other PD activities. I would also like to know if you provide any type of afterschool activities or care provision for students during the early release time. I would appreciate any and all feedback in reference to successes and pitfalls you have encountered in implementing early release (or late arrival) days for PLCs.


 * Deb Hamm, Superintendent, Oxford USD 358**

We have late start time for PLCs on Fridays. We delay the start of school by one hour and teachers are on teams - school improvement, content, or MTSS. Two Fridays a month teachers meet with their MTSS teams, once a month on school improvement teams, and once a month on content teams (usually K-12).

We do not provide childcare or other activities for students for this purpose.

We really have not experienced any issues related to late starts. There was some concern in the beginning (5 years ago) but once everyone got used to the change there haven't been any. From my perspective, the biggest issue has related to the functioning of the teams. Some work much better than others and some are pretty dysfunctional (as far as getting anything accomplished is concerned). Some teams are self-directed and productive others are not. We have provided Adaptive Schools training this year in hopes that teams will utilize the skills during their collaborative time. I believe that it is overall successful and provides teachers needed time to discuss student issues, plan for implementation of district initiatives, review data, and make improvements to the instructional program.


 * Randy Freeman, Silver Lake**

Brad, we will be implementing late starts next year, so I can't provide any feedback right now, but we don't plan on doing any babysitting or student supervision. For what it's worth, I think the time should be very valuable for our faculty.

Robert Mueller, Atchison Public Schools

We are hopeful that at our next board meeting our board will approve our plan for either 60 min weekly or 90 min bi-weekly early release on Wednesdays beginning next year. We have no plans to offer any student services during that time. Our thinking is that once we crack that door it could easily chip away at our PLC time so we have no plans in the making. Our agendas will be very tightly connected to the PLC framework - 1) pre teaching sharing strategies, 2) common assessments, 3) post teaching sharing strategies, 4) flex grouping (RTI).