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EDUCATION Levy helps Ashland add one school day After two decades of cutting, it's time for adding Comment By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune Posted Jun. 23, 2015 at 12:01 AM By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune Posted Jun. 23, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Social News As the Ashland School District considered adding a school day to its 2015-16 calendar, School Board Chairman Jim Westrick thought it would be a good idea to go back through district's records and try to find the last time Ashland took such a step. So through the years he searched, past the 2010s and deep into the 90s until finally, at 1993, he stopped looking. Bill Clinton’s presidency was only just beginning, the average movie ticket cost $4.14, Bryce Harper had yet to celebrate his first birthday and the Ashland School District, once again, did not add a day. Roughly 25 years later, the district is making a little history. After more than two decades of mostly going in the opposite direction the district will add one day of instruction to its 2015-16 calendar, bringing the total days of instruction to 173 days. The five-member School Board voted on June 8 to move an emergency day placeholder to the end of the school year and insert an instructional day on March 29, 2016. “Oregon has lost a lot of time in general and schools have less time in Oregon than in many other states in the K through 12 system, so that’s where it comes from,” Ashland School District superintendent Jay Hummel said. “I think we want to continue to add more days in the future.” Ashland’s 2014-15 school calendar included a grand total of 190 days, but nine of those were in-service days, five were holidays and four were conference days, leaving 172 days of actual instruction. Westrick said adding to the school year is something the district has looked into doing for a long time, but it only recently became a possibility, financially — the extra day will cost the district approximately $115,000, according to Hummel. “We had kind of a confluence of events,” he said. “Not only did we have the (Youth Activities and Academics Levy), but we are coming out of a recession. So the last time we were looking at things we were in the middle of a pretty big recession and primarily the benefit of the YAAL is that it kept us from having to cut a whole lot. "We saw other districts just cut drastically — they were cutting school days, they were cutting everything. And we didn’t have to have those kind of draconian cuts because we had the benefit of this extra push from our community. The Youth Activities and Academics Levy, a five-year tax levy, requires residential property owners within the district’s boundaries to pay $1.29 for every $1,000 of assessed value of their home annually. It provides roughly 10 percent of the district’s annual general fund revenue, or $2.6 million for the 2014-15 school year. Without the levy, Westrick said, the district “couldn’t even begin to talk about” adding school days. The issue of shrinking school years is particularly important in Oregon, Hummel points out, because the state has one of the shortest school years in the nation, on average. The average school year in Oregon during the 2014-15 school year was 167 days, according to the Oregon School Boards Association. That’s about three weeks less than the national average. Joe Zavala can be reached at 541-821-0829 or [email protected]. By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune MailTribune.com By Joe Zavala for the Mail Tribune Posted Jun. 23, 2015 at 12:01 AM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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