The San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) added an additional school day to the 2013-2014 school year, according to Principal Jeff Olivero.
The last day of school will be on June 13, a Friday, not the anticipated June 12, a Thursday, which is graduation day for seniors. Although seniors will have graduated on June 12, they and all other students will still be required to attend school the following day. As a result, seniors will not receive their diplomas until Friday, June 13.
“The difficulty and challenge for affected high schools, including ours, is that many families from across the country in different places have bought airline tickets, made specific travel plans, and so forth for June 12 [to attend the graduation ceremony], not June 13. So, we are going to keep graduation day on June 12,” said Olivero.
“We’re planning on having seniors come in for a movie morning. Seniors will meet in the auditorium from 7:24 to 11:35 a.m. on June 13. We will try and bring in some entertainment, such as a magician or a hypnotist, in the morning so seniors will have something to do for four hours,” said Olivero. According to Olivero, in previous years, seniors have participated in movie nights to fulfill their attendance obligations. This year, Olivero has planned a movie morning event on June 13, the day after graduation, for seniors to pick up their diplomas and meet the four hour attendance requirement.
“It’s a useless day. Students will have to attend school just to earn money for the district and take up space. They won’t actually learn anything on that day,” said Senior Mitchell Provencher.
Olivero proposed an alternate plan to administer diplomas during the last half of Grad Nite, a Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA) sponsored event for seniors that occurs after the graduation ceremony from 10 pm to 4 am. If the last four hours of Grad Nite, which occur on June 13 from midnight to 4 a.m., are considered school hours, the hours would technically meet the four-hour attendance obligation required by the district. This means seniors who attend Grad Nite would not be required to attend school from 7:24 to 11:35 a.m. on June 13 to receive their diplomas and meet the four-hour attendance requirement. However, this is merely a proposition.
According to Olivero, if for some reason, a student cannot attend school on June 13, the office will hold on to his or her diploma. “We will expect seniors to pick them up eventually. Our expectation is that students will either attend Grad Nite, if that proposition works out, or attend school on June 13 in order to pick up their diplomas,” said Olivero.
“For me, it’s an inconvenience because I won’t be [in town] to receive my diploma [on June 13]. It’s too bad that they won’t give it to me on graduation day,” said Senior Kimberly Livers.
According to San Diego Education Association (SDEA) Representative Deborah Williams, the SDEA and the SDUSD Board of Directors added Friday, June 13 to the schedule as an instructional day. During the 2011-2012 and 2012-2013 school years, five school days were removed from each school year. Senior Class Advisor John Middleton explained that several years ago, in order to prevent layoffs and save the district some money during the budget crisis, teachers agreed to the district’s plan to furlough five school days out of the year. Part of the negotiation states the district must give back the furlough days if more revenue is generated, which has now happened.
According to a nonpartisan collaborative encyclopedia website, Proposition 30, which passed in November 2012, temporarily raised sales tax and use tax by one-fourth of a cent for four years, and raised personal income tax on people earning over 250,000 dollars for seven years. Eighty-nine percent of the temporary tax revenues were allocated to K-12 schools (ballotpedia.org). Due to this increase in revenue, three furlough days were reinstated and added back to the school calendar for this 2013-2014 school year, according to Williams.
In late January 2014, the Joint SDEA SDUSD Budget Committee met, and the SDEA team pushed the district to restore one additional furlough day this year to the three already reinstated at the beginning of the school year. The fourth and final furlough day to be reinstated this school year is on June 13, the last day of school. Additionally, five furlough days will be reinstated for the 2014-2015 school year.