What to do with extra school time?

This year, Buffalo Grove-Long Grove Elementary District 96 students will be spending more time in school. Now the district just has to figure out how to fill it.

The school day will extend 15 minutes for elementary and middle schools and 20 minutes for kindergarten.

Principals and teachers at Woodlawn and Twin Groves, the district's two middle schools, came up with a possible plan for their students:

Three days a week, add a few minutes to each class period. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, shave a few minutes from every class period and hold two 30-minute intervention periods, in which teachers review specific topics with small groups of students right after the last lunch period.

But at this week's board meeting, some board members voiced concerns about the proposal. The discussion centered around the need to make intervention periods productive for all students.

"I don't want them sitting quietly, ever," as in a traditional silent study hall, said board vice president Victoria Juster, who fears the interventions will result in "a lot of children with a lot of time."

Board members agreed to discuss the proposal further at their Aug. 7 meeting.

The middle schools already offer a 45-minute intervention program after school, but the current proposal is "more global," said District 96 Superintendent Thomas Many, providing a general grammar lesson where the more targeted in-school intervention might focus on serial commas, for example.

Also, while students attend the after-school sessions voluntarily, the in-school ones would be mandatory. Teachers would pull out struggling students for interventions every one to two weeks based on performance on assessments such as tests and quizzes.

Many said he envisions the in-school interventions as "very fluid," with students cycling through as they need help with certain concepts.

Middle school staff members have already developed many ideas for activities students might do when they're not in intervention, and "the menu of things the kids can choose from will only grow over time," Many said.

"A handful" of teachers leading interventions at each middle school would receive a stipend equivalent to what a cross-country coach earns, Many said.