A large body of research, as well as our work in urban districts, points to the benefits of lengthening the school day to provide more hours of instruction for students—a strategy often known as Expanded Learning Time (ELT). Reliable funding for this extra time, however, is a big challenge for many districts and schools.

For this research paper, we partnered with Citizen Schools to look at six case study schools and three districts to see if they could use their resources in different ways to make ELT possible. To explore this, we addressed three important questions:

• Can districts and schools use existing resources to fund ELT for at-risk students?
• If so, how much funding could be freed up, and what trade-offs would be required?
• If not, what barriers prevent the repurposing of sufficient resources—for example, policies, practices, or overall funding levels?

Please Note: Pages 1-9 contain an executive summary of the findings, while the detailed report begins on page 10.

Sustainable Funding for Expanded Time in Public Schools (PDF)

Explore school design further with the following resources:

• School Design in Action site: View interactive portraits of schools that are optimizing resources for student success.
• The Sufficient Time section of the School Design in Action site: Four interactive profiles of schools that are ensuring students have enough time to meet rigorous standards and engage in motivating enrichment opportunities.
• Designing Schools that Work: This publication outlines the fundamental principles and process of Strategic School Design.
• School Check: Use this interactive on-line tool to assess where your own school is using resources strategically, and where you could reduce or increase spending to better meet student needs