As the discussions at West Seattle High School over the four period school day drag on, it appears the problem is the teachers and a large number of parents are on opposite sides of the issue.

Teachers and staff appear to be solidly on retaining the 13-year-old class schedule. More and more parents are coming forth to say the schedule should end because it is not a good one for their children. (See Rebekah Schilperoort's article on Page One.)

The reason we have local school districts in this country is so that parents may have a say on how their offspring are educated. In the end, they and not the educators or the school administrators, are the ones responsible for how students are educated. Certainly, parents are not trained educators and must listen to those who are, but the final decision is a collective one for the parents in a school.

The four period day has been standard at West Seattle High since it was implemented in the 1990s and had never been reviewed to determne its effectiveness. Now many parents are worried it is not properly educating their kids.

Parents note many major complaints. They say there are 23 percent less instructional hours per course compared with a standard 55-minute course in a six-period day. They maintain classes are 8 percent larger and that class per credit is reduced to approximately 117 hours, compared with 165 hours in a six-period day.

Parents also say there are long gaps between one level of study on a subject - such as math - that potentially affects the scores on the Washington Assessment of Student Learning exam.

A parent compared West Seattle's 2006 10th-grade Washington Assessment of Student Learning scores with other high schools in the district and concluded the West Seattle pass rates for all three subjects were the lowest in the district when adjusted for poverty.

Teachers at West Seattle say it is doing well with the four-period day and say it's among the top three high schools in the district in terms of improving state test scores in the past five years, based on a district review last year.

The steering committee has been meeting twice a month since February, but there's been little progress.

All of this leads us to believe that the teachers may be wrong and the parents may be right. The figures above suggestes the four-period day may be an experiment that needs to be ended even if it means some teachers are made uncomfortable.

The parents are, after all, the final judge of the education their children get, not the paid staff. Let's halt this stalemate and move on to bringing West Seattle High back into the mainstream.

- Jack Mayne