Causes financial hardship for parents. Creates EVERY Wednesday afternoon of empty hours which are wasted hours for our kids. How does this improve the quality of our schools? School board voted on EVERY Wednesday 12:30 pm dismissal without communication to parent community.   

Parents - Let your voices be heard. Write a letter to the Saratoga News.  Send an email to sn@community-newspapers.com.  Let's reinstate a regular Wednesday school day.  

This issue came up in 2005.  The teachers union wanted 35 Wednesday afternoons off for professional development.  The school board made a big effort to get parent stakeholder input and clearly communicated when the item would be voted on.  Parents signed petitions, filled the school board meeting and a compromise of 9 early dismissal days was reached and has been in effect the last 8 years.  This year the school board quietly voted to increase early dismissal days from 14 to 35 without communicating with parent community or getting stakeholder input from parents and tax payers.

The parent community has been blindsided by this disruptive schedule issue.  The school board needs to find the middle ground and compromise like 2005.  Every Wednesday afternoon off is unnecssary.     

No other surrounding school district has EVERY Wednesday noon dismissal except for a Los Gatos elementary school.  No Middle School has noon dismissal.  Palo Alto, Cupertino, and Los Gatos dismiss around 3 pm.  

Our kids need to be in school learning and not spending empty Wednesday afternoons in childcare or on videogames.

Wednesday becomes a non-instructional day especially at Redwood Middle School.  Redwood classes are 32 minutes each on Wednesday.  No time for PE, labs, group work, art, tests.  Many teachers voted against this change because they knew it ruined EVERY Wednesday education.  Elementary school lunch has been reduced to 20 minutes.  

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