By Illinois Radio Network
SPRINGFIELD – A change in Illinois education law removed a minimum instructional hour requirement, effectively allowing school districts to define what a school day means.
The change comes in conjunction with the removal of an option that allows schools to “bank” extra hours to shorten the overall school year.
Although Illinois law still requires 176 days of instruction during a school year, a previous statute allowed schools to “bank” time from school days that had more than the minimum of five instructional hours. These banked hours could then be applied to other days to allow for events like parent-teacher conferences.
“Now the requirement is still to have 176 days and students need to attend all 176 days,” said Ralph Grimm, acting chief education officer of the Illinois State Board of Education.
The statute change essentially adds two days of instruction to Illinois schools, although the number of days on the calendar stays the same.
Jackie Matthews, the director of media and external relations for the Illinois State Board of Education said this may cause local changes.
“There may be a change to school districts’ calendars locally if they had used that banking time before and so had only put on their calendar 174 days of student instruction,” Matthews said. “Then they would need to revise the calendar for next school year.”
Because the law allows schools to count enrollment rather than time attended, students will be able to count internships and similar programs toward the required time.
“This flexibility is really allowing schools to have conversations about what does the school experience look like for students,” Grimm said. “Anytime those kind of conversations takes place I think we can have the potential to see better outcomes for our students and even our teachers.”