By Jim Stegall

RALEIGH — One of the first acts of the Wake County Board of Education’s new majority was to end the controversial policy of releasing students one hour early on Wednesdays.

The early release policy, officially known as “Wake Wednesdays” but often called “Wacky Wednesdays” by its opponents, was meant to allow teachers time to collaborate with one another on lesson plans and come up with solutions to common problems.

In practice the program proved to be highly unpopular with parents, who were forced to make extra arrangements for childcare and transportation one day a week.

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The move to drop the program infuriated representatives of one teachers’ organization. Jennifer Lanane, president of the Wake County chapter of the North Carolina Association of Educators, the state’s largest teachers’ union, brought a contingent of teachers to the board’s Dec. 2 meeting to express their disapproval. In a blog post later that evening she attacked the board’s actions, saying “some extraordinary decisions were made that will affect Wake County children for a long time.”

Teachers’ union activists often argue that teachers could be more effective if they had more time without students during the day to work with their colleagues on common problems. In a presentation to the board earlier this year, Lanane defended the early release program, saying, “Teachers need collaborative time to look at the data, to look at where students are and then to find out what their team needs to help student achievement rise.”

But how much time do teachers and other education professionals really need to collaborate? A glance around the state at policies and practices in other school districts reveals none so generous as the now-defunct Wake Wednesdays plan. In most districts teachers are expected to handle their professional collaboration before or after school, during their planning periods, or on teacher workdays scattered throughout the school calendar.

And while some districts schedule early release days, none does so on a weekly basis.

Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools schedules a delayed opening one Thursday each month to allow teachers and staff time to collaborate, or for professional development. As in most districts with formal early release policies, school principals develop a plan for using the time and submit it to their district central office for approval.

District spokesperson Stephanie Knott says that that the program has been in place since the 2005-06 school year. At first school start times were delayed by only 90 minutes, she explained, but it was increased to two hours the following year at the request of teachers and administrators who wanted more time to complete their planned activities, and parents who found the 90-minute delay awkward.

Johnston County Schools has a “practice,” rather than a policy, of scheduling five early student release days a year for teacher collaboration, planning, or professional development. The days are spread out so that there is at least one in every quarter of the school year. School plans are approved by the central office. The length of time given teachers varies from school to school due to the staggered bus schedule, but is typically about two hours.

Theo Helm, a spokesman for Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools, says his district has “no standardized practice” for early release time, leaving it up the schools’ principals or site-based management teams (made up of teachers and administrators) to decide what arrangements are best for that school. He says that those arrangements do not involve releasing students early.

Cumberland County Schools has no short days for students. Their teachers are expected to collaborate before or after school, or during their daily planning periods. However, according to Superintendent Frank Till, teachers in “Title I” schools (schools with a higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students) sometimes meet on Saturdays to work on problems common to their schools. Federal Title I funds are used to pay teachers extra for this Saturday work.

Over in Guilford County, teachers get four early release days a year built into the schedule. As in other districts the schools write their own plans for using the time and have them approved by the central office. Haley Miller, the district’s manager of media relations, says that the district’s regional offices also plan professional development activities for teachers for use on teacher work days, or after regular school hours.

Asheville City Schools have an unofficial practice of scheduling four early release days a year for “structured professional development for staff,” usually based on a district-wide theme. Communications Director Charlie Glazener emphasized that these days were “not for teacher work or catch-up time.” He also said, “I was a little bit amazed when I saw they (Wake County Schools) were releasing students an hour a week.”

Glazener cited recent changes to the state’s school calendar law as one of the driving forces behind the move to early release days. That law stripped five teacher work days from the calendar, restricted what districts could ask teachers to do on other work days, and set start and end dates that in effect removed local control over much of the calendar. In an effort to keep parents informed about upcoming early release days, the Asheville school district sends out programmed phone calls to parents a few days in advance of each one.

The state’s second largest school district after Wake, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, has no specific policy regarding student early release for teacher collaboration.

Jim Stegall is a contributor to Carolina Journal.