Pawtucket will extend school day and year to make up for shortfall in learning time
PAWTUCKET, R.I. — The Pawtucket School Department will extend the school year at its elementary schools by nearly a week, and add 10 minutes to each day starting next week, to make up a shortfall in classroom time for students, the R.I. Department of Education said.
Pawtucket has been scrambling to solve the expensive mistake after the R.I. Department of Education discovered the elementary school day in Pawtucket was too short by five minutes per day.
R.I. Education Commissioner Angélica Infante-Green has approved a plan to add 10 minutes to the school day starting May 26, and extend the school year to June 24 by adding five makeup days, according to a letter from Infante-Green to Superintendent Randy Buck. Lunch on the last day of school will be cut short by five minutes.
Before the problem was discovered, the last day of school was expected to be June 18, including two makeup days for snow. (Had there been no weather-related cancellations, the last day of school was originally planned for June 16.)
Mayor Donald Grebien said officials have estimated it will cost roughly $255,000 to pay teachers and the school bus company to work beyond the planned end of the school year. (He said teachers do not have to be paid for the extra 10 minutes per day, because their contracted work day already extends beyond the school day for students.)
Talks are ongoing with the Pawtucket Teachers Alliance. The union president has not returned calls seeking comment.
Superintendent Randy Buck did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but previously said he was taking full responsibility for rectifying the mistake. It’s unclear when students and teachers will be notified that their school year has been extended.
Grebien said the problem predates Buck, who became superintendent last year, and goes back at least three years, though it could date back further.
“This superintendent followed the previous superintendent who followed the previous superintendent,” Grebien said. He acknowledged that previous classes of children also missed out on learning time.
“That’s sad, that’s wrong, and that comes to inadequate leadership in the School Department and the School Committee,” Grebien said, referring to previous leaders.
The shortfall in Pawtucket’s classroom time for elementary school students was discovered in April, when RIDE was considering a request from Pawtucket to waive a third makeup day for the February blizzard. The state had already waived the requirement for school districts to make up the days on Feb. 23 and Feb. 24, but Pawtucket was asking to also waive Feb. 25, which would have shortened the school year to 177 days from 180 days.
In considering the requests, a RIDE official asked school district officials to confirm that the elementary schools’ instructional time was at least 5 hours and 30 minutes, not including lunch and recess.
The assistant superintendent replied that once you subtract lunch and recess, the elementary school day is 5 hours and 25 minutes, five minutes short of state requirements.
The discovery prompted a frantic effort to fix the problem, which may date back years. It’s unclear how long the city’s10 elementary schools have hadonly had 5 hours and 25 minutes of instruction.
It also prompted RIDE to review Pawtucket’s entire school calendar, discovering additional snow days and snow-related delayed starts, which they used in calculating the true shortfall in instructional time. The new plan to extend the school day and year accounts for both lost learning time due to snow, and the mistaken bell times.
Rhode Island’s fourth-largest school district was already facing a budget deficit for next school year, and has sent layoff notices to 46 teachers, Bonollo said. The School Committee will now have to figure out how to balance the budget with the additional costs for teacher pay and busing.
State Senator Jonathon Acosta, who represents Pawtucket and Central Falls, said the issue shows why all of the school districts in the state should be on the same calendar. He has proposed a statewide calendar previously, but the legislation did not pass.
Acosta, a former teacher who lives in Central Falls, has one son in the Central Falls schools and one son in pre-K in Pawtucket, where his partner works.
“There are days where there is school in Central Falls but not in Pawtucket, and vice-versa,” Acosta said. “That’s ridiculous. There is no reason for that level of inconsistency and variation.”
He said RIDE should have audited the annual attestations where districts confirm they are in compliance with the number of required school hours. Pawtucket had attested it was in compliance each year since the attestations began in 2023.
“I think it’s everybody’s fault here,” Acosta said. “Everybody’s to blame.”
Adam Greenman, who is running against Grebien in the Democratic primary for mayor, said he was concerned about the additional cost to taxpayers, and also how this error was allowed to go on for so long.
“It’s really concerning, because this has cost students really important instructional time,” said Greenman. “The difference between instructional time throughout the year and instructional time at the of June are not the same thing.”
He criticized Grebien for “chronically underfunding the schools,” and said the school system should be a top priority in the budget.
Grebien disagreed. He said he increased funding to the schools when requested, and noted that the School Committee is responsible for balancing the budget and running the School Department with those funds.
He said Buck has been shoring up the district’s finances.
“It’s been very turbulent the last few years until we got Randy, who’s trying to fix it,” Grebien said.
“We all have responsibility here,” he added.
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