But after just one year, Providence will shorten its school day this fall, subtracting the extra 30 minutes from the schedule. Elementary schools will revert back to 6 hours and 15 minutes per day, while middle and high school will go back to 6 hours and 45 minutes.
The decision comes down to money, Superintendent Javier Montañez told the Globe. The state-run district spent $25 million worth of federal COVID relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act to pay teachers to work the extra 30 minutes per day and do 90 additional minutes of professional development every other week.
The COVID funds cannot be used for payroll after Sept. 30.
“If I had a magic wand, I believe this is something we should continue to do,” Montañez told the Globe in an interview. “It had an impact on students.”
He said more class time allowed for a “deeper exploration of subjects,” and gave teachers “the opportunity to personalize instruction and target individual students.”
It’s too soon to say definitively that the extra 30 minutes, which added up to the equivalent of nearly 15 additional school days, had a measurable impact on student outcomes. The latest scores from the Rhode Island Comprehensive Assessment System (RICAS), the official state assessment, won’t be released until this fall.
But Montañez said both math and reading proficiency appeared to have increased this year based on an interim test called STAR used internally in the district.
“It shows that we have made gains,” he said. “I think that we moved in the right direction.”
Diaz, who called the half hour “pointless,” said she may have found it more useful if it had been concentrated in one area, rather than spread out among all her classes.
“Maybe I did need the extra time in math,” she said. “But for English, I feel like we always accomplished everything we needed to.”
“It just made me get home really late,” she added, explaining that the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority bus schedule aligned better with the previous dismissal time. She said she often got home as late as 4 p.m. after taking the bus and transferring at Kennedy Plaza.
The longer school day was made possible through a one-year contract extension with the Providence Teachers Union, which expires Aug. 31. Negotiations for a new contract have only recently begun, but Montañez said he has not asked the teachers union to continue the longer school day.
“I’m not going to try and have that conversation if I don’t have the funds to back it up,” he said.
The district also cut jobs in the spring as a result of the expiring COVID relief funds, which were used in part to hire more social workers and other staffers. The superintendent has simultaneously been fighting — both in Rhode Island Superior Court and the court of public opinion — with Mayor Brett Smiley’s administration over school funding.
Maribeth Calabro, the Providence Teachers Union president, said the extended learning time was a “missed opportunity” because of the way it was spread out, adding a few minutes to every period of the day.
“That half hour should have been direct, targeted instruction for students in need,” Calabro said. “And extended programs for students at or above grade level.”
But she doesn’t think the experiment was a failure.
“Our students rose to the occasion; the ones who came to school on time every day and stayed all day, they worked their little tails off,” she said. “I think we will see results, but if we had configured it differently, I think we would have seen better and more results.”
Calabro said teachers would have been unlikely to agree to an extension to the longer school day, even if the district could afford it.
The shortened school day will result in smaller paychecks for teachers next year, since they were being paid to work the extra time. Teachers will get a small .75 percent pay increase when the contract ends Aug. 31. (The new contract could include a larger pay bump, but it has not yet been negotiated.)
Infante-Green, who controls the district under the state takeover, said Providence was the only Rhode Island district that used COVID relief funds to extend the length of the school day.
“It is still too early to determine the impact of the extended learning time with assessment results pending but generally, PPSD received positive feedback from students, parents, and educators on the collaborative and crucial effort to address learning loss caused by the pandemic,” Infante-Green’s spokesperson, Victor Morente said.
“I think it’s unfortunate that it won’t be continuing,” said Erlin Rogel, the president of the Providence School Board. He supported the original plan to extend the length of the school day, and said it would be a “top priority” of his to continue the experiment if funds become available.
“With just one year as a sample size, it’s hard to tell if it actually made a difference,” Rogel said. “It’s not enough data to determine whether it worked or not.”
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Steph Machado can be reached at steph.machado@globe.com. Follow her @StephMachado.