Last year the Kenai Peninsula School District implemented several early release days throughout the school year and the positive response from teachers and staff led the district to schedule those days again, said Pegge Erkeneff.
Erkeneff: “Those are set so parents can plan ahead of time and one of the changes this year is that they won’t all be on Wednesdays, some of the feedback we got is parents requesting for Fridays so two of them will be on Fridays and four of them will be on Wednesdays.”
She said that teachers can use that extra time on those days to improve their own skills.
Erkeneff: “Its a time for a whole facet of school to work together, team work, analyze data, review new teaching strategies, so ultimately it really benefits our students, and another way to think of it instead of early release is it’s a minimum day for students and a maximum day for teachers because the teachers really are using that time effectively.”
Erkeneff added that she knows that some parents have difficulties with the early release days due to work schedules and thanked them for working through that.
