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Kamala Harris Proposes 10-Hour School Day
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is introducing a Senate bill to keep kids in school from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The proposed goal is to align schedules between the average school day and workday. While this might be convenient for working parents, it would trap students in classrooms for 10 hours, five days a week.
The actual goal is something different: strengthening teachers’ unions, federalizing local schools, and further replacing the family with the state.
In a glowing profile, Mother Jones attempts to sell Harris’s plan:
The majority of schools days end around 3 p.m., two hours before the end of 70 percent of parents’ workdays. And most schools don’t have a way to make up the difference. Fewer than half of all elementary schools—and fewer than a third of low-income schools—offer after-school care. Beyond that misalignment, schools shut down, on average, for 29 days during the school year, the majority of which are reserved for professional development, parent-teacher conferences, and myriad vacations and minor holidays the federal government doesn’t recognize. That’s a full two weeks’ worth of days more than what the average American has in holidays, vacation, and paid leave combined. And then, of course, there’s summer vacation, a two- to three-month break that leaves working parents scrambling for day-long care.
The school day and calendar is a bad deal for children: In the absence of a better alternative, 3 percent of elementary-school students and 19 percent of middle-school students look after themselves from 3 to 6 p.m. on school nights. But it’s an equally bad deal for working parents—and the economy as a whole. A family paying out of pocket to cover child care for those two hours between the end of the school and workday costs an average of $6,600 dollars per year, or nearly 10 percent of an average family’s income. Almost 40 percent of all workers lack access to any paid vacation time, which means parents will often have to scale back their workday to accommodate child care duties.
In that case, why not eliminate half the holidays and cut summer vacation to a week? That way, unmotivated parents could be even less involved with their kids and focus on what’s really important: sending more tax dollars to Washington.
Published in Education, Elections
Arbeit macht frei! Jawohl!
I assume she’s never been in a room with a bunch of children for that long, even without having to maintain order and discipline.
Don’t know how I got the obviously erroneous impression that the education of children, especially K-12, was a State, County, and Municipal government/parent responsibility. Obviously, I must be wrong again. After all, no candidate running for President of the United States would venture to usurp that responsibility to the Federal government. It would just be too outrageous.
One sort of doubts that anyone at Mother Jones either has kids or thinks they’re a good idea. Personally I don’t think Kamala Harris goes far enough. All children of all ages should be in a government facility from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Also, when did 3 to 6 p.m. become part of school nights?
So we would still have deal with them at night?
If we can have Medicare for All, why not orphanages for all? Parents could visit if and when they find a time convenient for them.
That’s too long for kids, but the Mother Jones quote has some good points. Way too many vacations and breaks – we never remember having that much time off. It seems there would be a market for plenty of affordable day care, or parents that are home earlier or work from home could work out a schedule where kids could have a safe place to go – neighbors solving this together? Advocating for more on site daycare? The YMCA? Churches? These were solutions in my day – and women choosing to stay at home or home-school. I get that two parents need to work to make ends meet, but it seems a workable problem.
PS..I can’t believe she’s still in the race…
Stay in your lane, Kamala. Gob-smackingly bad ideas are Liz Warren’s brand.
Just think of all the Global Warming, Social Justice and all around Wokeness that can be indoctrinated, er “taught” to the little Comrades with that extra time…
Indeed. Even setting aside the issue that federal education funding is probably unconstitutional, it’s just arrogance for someone to think that they have an idea that will work best for 330 million people. If various school districts want to try her proposed schedule, go for it. I don’t care. If some school districts want year-round schooling, or make the school year just 6 months long, it’s none of my business. But this is absolutely not an issue that should be decided at the federal level.
What next? What other decisions are we too stupid to make at the local level? Coke vs. Pepsi? There can only be one correct choice, so we need Washington to make it for us.
I thought they were just generally the Democrat brand.
Kids currently attend school for 5 hours per day. So we double that. It’s not like we’d have to double the personnel costs of teachers/administrators/aides or anything. Watching how schools operate now, it would require TRIPLING the personnel costs. But that’s not important.
It’s for the children!
It would also kill off non-governmental extracurricular activities such as private music lessons, private sports, after-school religious instruction, after-school jobs for older kids…
It would also kill off homework.
It makes schools like prisons, this is exactly her lane
The worship of education as the means of solving all problems leads this bad idea. Children need less professional interference and more directly from their parents. There are tradeoffs, which are already evident by the college student lunacy from fairly sane parents.
A. Lincoln said he went to school by littles and figures he had about 6 weeks formal education.
Christopher Lasch lamented the separation of children from parents all day (everyone gets up and goes in different directions) where the children miss valuable representation of adulthood from their parents, not idealized adults. Or something like that.
Just read a good quote from Al Capp (L’il Abner cartoonist) “Any place that anyone can learn something useful from someone with experience is an educational institution.”
More money for teachers to stay, more money for Federal lunch programs because we need to add a third meal, and no one learning the core elements.
might need new facilities so students who can’t get a ride home can sleep
turn schools into more of a government waste slush fund
Busing and 10-hour school days. Every parent’s dream for their little ones. It’s why we have kids, isn’t it? To hand them over to the state? Some parents work weekends, too, you know. Why should government schools be limited to week days when there’s a need?
It’s almost as if they hate us. As Klavan says, “we hate you. Now vote for us.”
The master plan:
I’m pretty sure Kamala Harris does not have children. In my humble opinion, that should disqualify her from making public education policy and running for most offices in general.
You need to have some stakes in the game. If you don’t have kids, why would you care about the future?
No, she does not. Her husband has two adult children, though.
Maybe some folks are more historically-centered and care about the future for love of country?
Hahahaha :)
In our district there is school-age care, before and after school, from 6:00 am to 6:00 pm. We already have some children in the buildings for 12 hours a day, five days a week, breakfast, lunch and snacks provided. Often, when there are scheduled days off, be they holidays or professional development days, the school-age care runs all day. It is not cheap, and parents who cannot afford daily care will just drop off their kids on their way to work – sometimes 30 to 45 minutes early because they know there is someone in the building. Teachers do not work as school age care employees, but many of the caregivers are already employed by the district as paraprofessionals (their union is the SEIU).
I’ve always been an advocate for year round school – but the models I’ve seen would not actually increase the number of school days. It’s generally six weeks on, two weeks off, and no school in July. It’s the teachers who usually put up the barriers for that type of model – they like their summers off.
Overall, this is a local decision. That’s why there are elected school boards. The feds and state do not need to get involved.
Next will be mandatory Ritalin administered with every “free” school meal.
Plus she was the long term mistress to a married man with three children.
I love the OP, but it is insufficiently cynical.
It’s interesting that Mother Jones doesn’t instead advocate for reducing the work-day for parents. Reducing working hours used to be a big priority for the labor movement. Big Labor loves to crow that unions are to thank for the 40-hour work week, but now Mother Jones is saying that teachers get too much time off? When did Mother Jones become a shill for capitalists’ control over the workers?
…
Hmm, here’s an interesting quote from the original Mother Jones: “Working men deserve a wage that allows women to stay home to care for their kids.”
Ritalin’s got a pretty bad reputation these days. She’s more likely to advocate for federal funding into the research and development of Soma.
It’s almost like respecting the States’ jurisdiction over education works.
(Oh wait, you made that point in the bit of the comment that I cut off. Some day I’ll learn to read an entire comment before adding my own two cents, but today is not that day.)
So, Saturday school, too.
Once again stealing ideas from Aldous Huxley.