California Legislature Fails Arithmetic
The California legislature is scrambling to fix the snafu that is forcing two Southern California elementary schools to stay open an extra 34 days. Susie Lange, California Department of Education's deputy superintendent of fiscal services, said "To the average person, it sounds like crazy bureaucracy that we count the number of minutes,"
As a couple of us have worked in the educational system, it does sound like crazy bureaucracy. But that's because they aren't counting the minutes.
It's not a matter of the schools being short of the state allotted 54,000 minutes in school. The students made and even exceeded that requirement by the end of the scheduled school year. It's a matter that, because their Fridays were 5 minutes short at Dickson Elementary in Chino and 10 minutes short at Rolling Ridge Elementary, those days weren't counted at all. As far as the legislature's tally goes, the 170 minutes and 175 minutes students spent each Friday at those schools never happened. In arithmetic as figured by the state legislature, 180 - 5 = 0.
Yes, the school district made a serious error in miscounting the minutes. But how could the legislature intentionally make a law that ignores time students actually spent at school?
Estimates are that even if the state legislature works at maximum efficiency, it will be at least another eight days to fix something that should never had been made broken. Perhaps we need to send those legislatures to those elementary school students. Maybe one of the kids there can teach them how to do their arithmetic.
Students at two elementary schools in San Bernardino, California, exceeded the number of required minutes to be in school. So they're off on summer vacation, right? Wrong. Instead, they have 34 more days of school. Instead of getting out on in the middle of June, they're supposed to stay until the end of July.
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