It is encouraging to see Education Minister El James floating ideas of what could be done to improve the education system.  It opens the door to more discussion and debate such that we can hopefully end up with a stronger result in the end.  The suggestion of a longer school year was discussed previously in our review of the KIPP system and is certainly something worth larger consideration.  The suggestion that combating gang behavior is the reasoning behind shortening breaks makes the argument less compelling as it is unclear how the two correlate.  We’ll see where the discussion takes us but in the least we can be thankful that discussion is being had.