Why do schools have many partial school days even though they are inefficient, opposed by families and potentially detrimental to student learning?

Because they’re wildly popular with the unionized employees of the state’s public education system.

Teachers are paid an annual salary, but what counts as a “year” is not defined in law. In the past, the state wanted to be sure its school districts could expect teachers to spend important non-classroom time on responsibilities like professional training, analysis of student data, peer group collaboration and more.

From 2002 until 2008, the state funded two or three extra days’ pay for the educators’ non-student professional responsibilities, evidently because a salary for a year does not include these days.

When this funding for extra non-student days ended during tight times, many districts added dozens of partial school days to their calendars to create time for these or other responsibilities.

This year, the Washington State Legislature completed the work of providing funding for education with House Bill 2242. Lawmakers restored funding for 24 hours’ worth of paid non-student professional time for educators. They coupled the new compensation with an obligation to reduce the number of disrupted school days to no more than seven.

The union lobbyists like to get a double victory when possible, so they decided they wanted employees to get to keep the money AND to continue with the half-day phenomenon in schools.

So they wrote the governor a letter asking for the restriction on partial days to be vetoed. See Here

Gov. Inslee followed his orders to the letter, and families no longer have a guarantee against a frequently disrupted schedule. See here

Inslee left intact the funding for employees to be paid for three non-student professional days, but unions can continue to insist on a schedule that disrupts dozens of student learning days. For the governor, education spending increases were less about services to families than they were about funding the adults – especially the union-affiliated ones who’ve been so generous to his last two campaigns.