Increasing number of students will face shortened school year
The state's budget crisis is putting so much pressure on public school districts that some are being forced to trim the school year before school gets out this year.
Last month, I wrote about proposals in the majority of California's largest school districts to shorten the coming school year by granting teachers unpaid furlough days.
But on Tuesday, the board of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the state's largest school district by far, voted to shorten the current school year by a week before summer vacation begins in June.
That means teachers must now figure out how to finish up their lesson plans with one less week to teach. Parents will have to arrange activities for kids who will be out of school for an unplanned week.
And it's not only a mammoth district like LAUSD, with an enrollment of 687,000 students, that has been forced to cut classes in the waning months of the school year. The Willows Unified School District north of Sacramento, with an enrollment of 1700 students, has already begun eliminating four instructional days by granting teachers