Kuna school board approves shorter Wednesdays next year

Wednesdays will be one hour shorter next year for students in the Kuna school district.
Kuna school board members last week unanimously approved next year’s school calendar that includes reducing the school day by one hour nearly every Wednesday.
Students in kindergarten through sixth grade will be released at 1:30 p.m., while students in grades 7 through 12 will start school at 9 a.m.
The purpose of the shorter class times is to provide teachers with more professional development and collaboration time.
Assistant superintendent Wendy Johnson said that an experiment to shorten the school day by one hour each Friday at Kuna High School proved successful this school year and has become in demand among teachers in other schools.
In a recent survey of 277 school district employees, 86.6 percent said they were in favor of increased collaboration time among teachers, one of the highest areas of agreement, Johnson said.
In addition, the district is anticipating changes due to Common Core State Standards as well as new technology from the Students Come First education reforms, and this time would help teachers handle those changes.
“The intention of this time is to give school teams time to collaborate together to plan units, lessons, instructional strategies, common assessments and review student work,” according to a survey being put out by the district seeking feedback on the calendars.
You can see more details about next year's calendar in this week's issue of the Kuna Melba News.