Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Education Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Superintendent briefs board on state executive order redefining instructional time
Summary
Superintendent Lee Loving explained a new executive order that changes how instructional hours are counted (including passing time, lunch and recess), showing recalculated annual hours and describing implications for district comparisons with other states.
Superintendent Lee Loving briefed the board on an emergency executive order the governor issued to recalibrate how instructional time is defined and reported across Oregon.
Under the previous Division 22 approach, districts counted instructional minutes more narrowly (excluding passing time, lunch and recess). The executive order aligns Oregon with the typical national practice of counting the full bell-to-bell day. Superintendent Loving said that under the new calculation, annual hours increase materially: 12th-grade students’ accounted hours rise from a minimum of 966 hours to about 1,171 hours; grades 9–11 rise to roughly 1,228 hours; and K–8 calculations increase to about 1,122 hours (district bus schedules can affect elementary totals).
Loving said the change aims to make “apples to apples” comparisons with other states and to reduce incentives for districts to cut student days purely to reduce budgets. He noted the rules committee made additional clarifications and that the work is ongoing.
“We want those conversations in the future to be apples to apples about instructional hours,” Loving said, explaining why the state updated definitions and why published comparisons will shift.
Board members discussed implications for reporting, comparisons of state test thresholds and potential impacts on districts that had proposed reducing student contact days as a budget tool.
