School Day

New Jersey ranks among the bottom states for school-breakfast participation. And when Garden State schools do serve breakfast, it's typically at the wrong time. That needs to change. Across the state, 525 school districts provide the most important meal of the day to low-income students who otherwise might not get breakfast. But most serve breakfast before the first classes begin, and many students who can't get to school that early start the day hungry. Their learning often suffers as a result.

About 2,800 fifth graders (and some fourth graders, too) came to the Academy of Music yesterday for a special concert of new and old music. Among the players was one almost as young as the students: Violinist Karen Sinclair, 15.

For students and staff at schools around the state, February means more than groundhogs or dead presidents' birthdays: It marks the start of the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment exams. The PSSA is a series of state-mandated tests that measure student performance in the basics - reading, writing and mathematics. The tests also serve as the major tool for documenting a district's academic achievement. Schools not meeting predetermined standards are subject to public criticism and sometimes are overhauled.

The Pennsauken Board of Education, by a 7-1 vote, last night rejected a proposal to lengthen the school day at the high school and middle school, a plan that was aimed at improving scores in the state-mandated proficiency test. Instead, the board approved another plan that will offer extra math instruction to middle school students in need of remedial help. John Ritchie, prinicipal of the middle school, said board members opted for the second plan partly because they felt it would be more effective in improving basic skills.

Saturday classes for high school students had a short but successful run last weekend at Octorara Senior High School. Seventy percent of the students in grades nine through 11 braved the fog to make it to school by 8 a.m. Saturday, school officials said this week. Classes ran until 12:15 p.m., with one 15-minute break. The students had to make up four hours of instructional time after the district fell short of the 990 hours for secondary students required to get state financing.

In the late 1970s, when inflation was rampant and memories of Watergate and the Vietnam War were still raw, Pat Toomey spent part of each school day in a high school history classroom quietly seething. It was the teacher who got under his skin. Too many lectures were about capitalism's failings, corruption in Washington, or how America was no better than the Soviet Union. None of it squared with Toomey's patriotic take on U.S. history or his budding conservative ideology. "I felt we were a great, great country, a great civilization," said Toomey, 42, who has represented the Lehigh Valley and parts of Montgomery County in the House of Representatives since 1999.

The Cherry Hill Board of Education and its teachers agreed to a new contract this week that extends the school day for middle and high school students. To better understand why, simply do the math. Beginning in September, the school day will begin 30 minutes earlier for secondary students. Elementary teachers will also report a half-hour earlier to prepare before their students arrive. The additional time adds up. Thirty minutes more every day for 180 days is the equivalent of about 14 days in additional classroom or preparation time.

Children returned to classes yesterday for the first time since four classmates and 12 other people died in a Christmastime massacre, and one school official described the day as "so close to normal it's scary. " "Just super" was the way high school principal Lloyd Herrick said the 1,150 pupils in the district seemed to be coping in the wake of the slayings of 16 people, all but two from one family. Ronald Gene Simmons Sr., 47, has been charged with two of the slayings. He is expected to be charged with the other 14, all members of his family.

Here's the bad thing for 10-year-old Tamara Weiner: Her friend Katy attends the Upper Merion Area School District Extended Day Program only twice weekly. "I wish she would go there the other days," Tamara said. "But now I'm starting to go there less, because I'm kind of capable of staying by myself. " Now, maybe. Four years ago, no way. The after-school extended-day program began when Tamara was a first grader. Before school, she went to a neighbor's house. Now that there is a morning program as well, Tamara arrives at school at 7:30 a.m. "I like the idea of dropping her at school and knowing that she is in good hands," said Judy Weiner, an associate professor of computer science at Temple University.

New Jersey ranks among the bottom states for school-breakfast participation. And when Garden State schools do serve breakfast, it's typically at the wrong time. That needs to change. Across the state, 525 school districts provide the most important meal of the day to low-income students who otherwise might not get breakfast. But most serve breakfast before the first classes begin, and many students who can't get to school that early start the day hungry. Their learning often suffers as a result.

By Nathan Mains Every school day in Pennsylvania, 82 high school students leave school after classes - and never return. That's more than 14,000 school dropouts last year across the commonwealth. Fifty-four of Pennsylvania's 598 high schools are considered among the nation's lowest performers, meaning that fewer than 60 percent of freshmen progress to their senior year on time. Dropping out of school isn't just a stigma - it's a life-changing disadvantage with wide-ranging implications and the issue is dogged by troubling questions around who's dropping out, the reasons for the exodus, and the societal and economic consequences.

By William C. Kashatus When I was a teenager in the 1970s, I refused to get out of bed for school at 6 a.m. It got so bad that my mother threatened to pour ice water over my head. Not until my father took away the car keys did I force myself to roll off the mattress and become the grouchy morning person who trudged off to school. Forty years later, my adolescent son is exhibiting the same early-morning behavior. Just like his teenaged father, he's trying to get an education, play sports, and hold down a weekend job on less than six hours of sleep each night; not nearly enough rest for an adolescent who lives in a 24/7 culture.

I AM A Philadelphia School District (PSD) teacher in my 36th year, and what has really gotten stuck in my craw most has been the imperial, patronizing manner in which the PSD leadership has been conducting its business. Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. arrived six months ago spouting transparency and community engagement, but what we've mostly gotten has been something far less. School Reform Commission Chairman Pedro Ramos and the SRC set the stage by surreptitiously hiring an attorney to lobby the state Legislature to increase the power of the SRC to impose working conditions.

Teachers have long stressed the "three R's" - reading, writing, and arithmetic - as fundamental to learning. It's time to bring back another R: recess. In their well-intentioned emphasis on academics and standardized test scores, schools across the country have eliminated recess. Today, only 40 percent of public schools offer a play period. It's time to reconsider recess' benefits for students' minds as well as their bodies. Expecting elementary-school children to sit in classrooms for hours on end may actually hurt the learning process.

William R. Hite Jr. wants you to know: He does not want to drive teachers out of the Philadelphia School District. The superintendent says he doesn't want to take away their water fountains, desks, or privileges to leave the building during their lunch periods. He's not after students' books and he doesn't want to increase class sizes. "We believe teachers are professionals, just like architects, lawyers, doctors," Hite said Thursday in an interview. "We want a contract that reflects that.

THE SCHOOL DISTRICT announced Friday that it will recommend nine schools to become renaissance schools, a district initiative aimed at turning around low-performing schools. Two of the selected schools - Strawberry Mansion High and McMichael Elementary - were on the district's proposed school closure list last week, but on Tuesday, the district announced that both would stay open. Strawberry Mansion, Edison High, and Barry, Bryant, Cayuga and McMichael elementaries were recommended to be Promise Academies.

MANY COLLEGE kids change their major once or twice, then accept their degree and wind up working in an entirely different field. Somehow, it's impossible to envision Jared Jackson traveling down that winding road. "I've wanted to be a doctor since I was 2 or 3 years old," he said. Two or three? That early? "Yes," he said. "I had the little stethoscope around my neck. Played with the fake X-ray toy . . . Be a doctor. That's all I wanted to do. " In time, Jackson, a 6-1, 215-pound defensive end, also began mixing in football and Wednesday morning he was part of a wonderful, in-the-gym ceremony at Imhotep Charter, which last fall captured Public League and City Titles at the Class AA level and advanced to a state semifinal.

If breakfast is the most important meal of the day, why are so many public-school students needlessly going hungry? Only 35 percent of New Jersey's 471,714 children eligible for a free or reduced-price meal received breakfast at school last year. That's among the lowest participation rates in the country. New Jersey ranks 46th in the number of low-income students who get breakfast at school. Pennsylvania is 36th. Nationally, only about 50 percent of students in the reduced or free lunch program eat a school breakfast.