BURBANK : Early Dismissal for Students Rejected

In a split vote, the Burbank school board has rejected a proposal from John Muir Middle School to let students out of class an hour early twice a month to give teachers more planning time.

“I’ve got comments from people saying, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ ” board President Elena Hubbell said just before the 2-2 board vote that defeated the measure last week.

Hubbell and board member Joseph Hooven voted against the plan, while Denise Lioy Wilcox and Robert Dunivant supported it. Board Vice President William S. Abbey left the meeting early because he was ill and didn’t vote on the measure.

Supt. Arthur Pierce told the board that a tie vote defeats an action.

The early dismissals, which would have been on the first and fourth Tuesday of every month, would have been used for teachers to plan an interactive educational program called American Odyssey. As part of the program, students learn lessons about one subject while studying another.

The school is in the second year of the program, in which all eighth-grade students collaborate their English and history lessons. The students may be studying the American Revolution in one class and reading novels from the period in another. Role playing, creative writing and special events combined with the lessons have produced remarkable results, teachers and administrators said.

Had the request been approved, the school would have expanded the program to include other subjects.

“We’re going for a bond issue where people are going to be looking at what we do very carefully,” Hubbell said. Parents tend not to support having students in class less often, the board president has said.