Indiana’s Department of Education is looking at the clock in a whole new way—a way that threatens the continued existence of parent-teacher conferences.

A new school year has started in the South Bend and Penn Harris Madison districts without any scheduled days for parent-teacher conferences.

School districts in Mishawaka and Elkhart have managed to schedule just one day of parent-teacher conferences, compared to two days last year.

“We’ve had an extraordinarily high percentage of parents participate in conferences at the elementary level last time was 98-percent attendance,” said Dan Towner, the Executive Director of Curriculum and Instruction for School City of Mishawaka. “There is reason for concern, we historically have had two rounds of conferences at the elementary level, a fall and a spring conference, we’ve always felt they’re very valuable and time well spent with parents.”

While Indiana’s Department of Education also believes in the importance of parent-teacher conferences, it is sticking to its determination that many school districts in the state are wrong to use half-days to make the meetings possible.

“Parent-teacher conferences are important but probably not at the expense of that critical instructional time that students so desperately need,” said Indiana Department of Education spokesman Cam Savage. “We have a state law that says students have to have 180-full days of instruction, for the first time, the Department of Education felt it necessary to enforce that law.”

Before the Department of Education’s change of heart—School City of Mishawaka had six half days scheduled for the current academic year.

Now it has zero, but has managed to salvage one parent-teacher conference session. “We feel good where we’re at right now and we’re pleased that we were at least able to have one date,” said Towner. “And that will be a date where students at the respective levels will not attend school at all.”

As it stands, the South Bend Community Schools don’t have any parent-teacher conferences scheduled. “Okay, they’re not on the books right now,” said Superintendent James Kapsa. “We’re looking at all sorts of options depending on each school.”

Kapsa indicates that the traditional parent-teacher concept of face to face meetings may change. He says future sessions may involve “using the computer, by sending messages by e-mail to the parents, that type of thing, certainly phone calls have always worked,” said Kapsa.