We're kind of guiding (school use of professional development time) more into a specific focus on the school improvement plan. I think this year we all learned from our pilot that we may have tried to do too much, in introducing a multitude of teaching strategies and things. We want to go more in depth on one or two topics.

The principals felt that (professional development) was a good use of time, but the trade-off of kids going home early was lost teaching time. They wanted to make sure we had an opportunity for better balance.

We're kind of front-loading some of those days when we think professional development does the most good, and that's in the beginning of the school year.