AUBURN — Auburn schools have some company when it comes to the effort to use class time for teacher professional development.

Rumford schools have weekly late-arrival, as do Sanford and Sabattus.

Unity has six late-start days a year, Jackman has eight, Hampden has some and uses substitutes for those days. Gray schools dismiss students early almost once a month.

In a list released Tuesday by the Auburn School District, seven Maine school districts have late arrival or early release on a regular basis, ranging from every week to six times a year.

The seven on the list are among 13 districts involved in the Maine Cohort for Customized Learning, said Auburn Curriculum Director Shelly Mogul. That shows, she added, that a majority of schools involved in mass customized learning are using what was class time for teachers to coach each other.

The list also shows that other districts don’t use both early release and late arrival.

The Auburn School Committee is scheduled to vote Wednesday night on late arrival for grades 7-12. On Wednesdays school would begin at 9:30 a.m. instead of 7:30, the two hours would provide teachers time to coach each other on mass customized learning, a new way of proficiency-based teaching.

The proposal is unpopular with some parents, some who complain about the existing early release for grades K-6. Parents blasted the late start arrival proposal July 18, when the Committee tabled the item. During a workshop Sept. 26 the committee agreed to vote on it when the committee meets Wednesday night.

The list Auburn schools released Tuesday is of schools involved in customized learning. Checking with other districts “gave us an opportunity to see what other people are doing,” Auburn Superintendent Katy Grondin said. Switching to mass customized learning “is re-inventing schools,” she said. Teachers need time to learn how to lead students. “Our commitment is having the best schools for our students. We’re asking parents to support that.”

Grondin said she’ll recommend late-start arrival begin after the Christmas break in January. That would allow time to develop goals and objectives. Outcomes would be measured to show if schools achieved “what we said we would,” Grondin said.

In Rumford, RSU 10 School Superintendent Thomas Ward said his district has opened school one hour late on Wednesdays for about eight years to provide teachers professional development time.

“It’s been tremendous for us,” Ward said. “We’ve always provided a supervised area for parents to drop kids off if they have to go to work. That’s worked very well.” About 9 percent of students are dropped off early on Wednesdays, Ward said. Providing a place for students when their parents have to get to work avoided controversy, he said.

The hour before school takes care of “a need for common time for our employees to get together for staff development. And it’s a consistent time.” Periodic early release days, which other districts do, “aren’t consistent enough,” Ward said.

In Gray, Superintendent Bruce Beasley said his schools have an early-release day about once a month during most months. “We’re not having one in November because of the Thanksgiving break,” Beasley said.

The time allows teachers to work together on curriculum, which includes moving toward mass customized learning. The early-release days are built into the calendar and always on a Monday, Beasley said. Grades K-4 are dismissed at 1 p.m., grades 5-12 at noon.

There are no plans, he said, to add more early-release days. “We aren’t in a place where we can add time.”

Statewide, there’s no data on how many districts have shortened days for professional development, Maine Department of Education spokesman David Connerty-Marin said.

“It is legal. The requirement is 180 school days a year, of which 175 must be instructional.” Shortened days count, Connerty-Marin said. “It’s not about the hours, it’s about days.” School districts are expected to help students achieve standards. “How they do that has been a local decision.”

The single most important factor in student achievement is highly effective teachers. In Auburn, “here’s a district working to support their teachers in developing and improving their craft, that would seem like a valid investment of time,” Connerty-Marin said.

And, he added, Auburn is working to build a student-centered, proficiency-based learning system, something the state supports.

In Lewiston, a district not working on customized learning as Auburn is, time is given to teachers to collaborate three times a month, each for 90 minutes.

“It takes place after school,” said Lewiston Superintendent Bill Webster. “We recognize the need for teachers to meet, to collaborate and work together. We do it in a way that doesn’t disrupt learning time for students.”

Lewiston is interested in customized learning, but now is involved in new teacher evaluations. Mass customized learning “is a massive undertaking,” Webster said. “I am not sure that we could do it within the professional development time we have available.”

What is mass customized learning?

Mass customized learning is performance-based learning, a new way of teaching where students “own” their education, are taught according to their levels, and understand their goals on what they’re learning and why, Auburn School Department Curriculum Director Shelly Mogul said.

Teachers will be trying things in the classroom that are different, she said. “They’ll run into problems implementing this. They need to problem-solve” with other teachers. They will need that kind of problem-solving on a regular basis, Mogul said. “If teachers don’t have access to that conversation, to work with peers,” teaching reverts back to old ways, Mogul said.

Edward Little High School is beginning to establish new classroom cultures that include asking students to give teachers input on how their learning is going, what would make it better.

Typically if you ask students what they’re learning, they’re tell you what they’re working on, Mogul said. In a recent U.S. history class where the teacher had customized learning training, Mogul asked students what they’re learning. “They said, ‘We’re studying the Salem witch trials, but we’re really learning about opression.'”

Learning should be “more than being able to articulate dates and facts,” Mogul said. It’s about making learning more meaningful, allowing students to use tools to help them become better learners.

For more about mass customized learning, visit http://mainecustomizedlearning.org/

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