Link: http://blogs.newsobserver.com/wakeed/wake-pta-praising-the-weekly-early-dismissals

Both the Wake County school board and new Wake County PTA Council praise the new early release policy that will be implemented as of today. Children will be released 1 hour early on Wednesday afternoons with a 2 1/2 hour early release every sixth Wednesday. In an attempt at maintaining the required number of instructional hours and days during the year, ten minutes will be added to each school day during the rest of the week.

This new policy will add more stress in the lives of families which have both parents working outside the home. Childcare during the middle of the day for an added hour once a week will be a nightmare to find. In reality, it promotes more latch-key kids.

Follow up:

I must say, I'm not convinced that adding 10 minutes to the school days, Mon-Tue and Thur-Fri will really be quality educational time. I do agree that teacher training and peer exchange of instructional tips and tricks would benefit both teachers and children. However, wouldn't this time be better utilized as an additional teacher workday? Or, could the current teacher workdays be better structured to allow for this type of peer exchange?

Not sure what the school board was thinking, but this new plan seems to have a lot of drawbacks which may ultimately negatively impact our children.