Editorial: Don't pooh-pooh a longer school day

Should a longer school day be under discussion for parents, students and teachers? To answer that, we'd all have to agree on how much of the day school swallows up now.

The Southampton district is considering adding about an hour and 45 minutes each day in exchange for a $2.6-million annual state grant that would pay for the extra 300 hours of instruction during the the academic year. Southampton is one of nine districts in the state to win the grant, and the only one on Long Island.

At first the idea sounds daunting. Kids probably wouldn't be very excited about getting home that much later, and what about their sports and other activities, or time to just relax? About 60 people showed up at a meeting to discuss the idea last week, and some didn't love it. Said one father of a fourth-grader: "Where in God's name do you think you're going to extract another two hours from this kid's life? . . . We're going to centralize every kid's life around school and have him sitting in school for nine hours?"

But the district's assistant superintendent for instruction suggested it enables students to go home with all homework done, and we're all for that. Kids have a lot better chance of learning if they do schoolwork supervised by knowledgeable teachers instead of dazed parents. And imagine the reduction in household tension if students get home an hour or two later -- but free of the hour or two of work parents otherwise must nag them to complete.

Is this the perfect answer? We don't know, which is exactly why these pilot projects can be so valuable. Give it a try, Southampton. We'll be watching, and rooting for you.