This week, 10 school districts serving nearly 40,000 students across five states committed to keep students learning 300 hours longer each school year. Some will add days to the school calendar. Others will add hours to the school day.

This exciting new initiative led by the nonprofit National Center on Time and Learning and the Ford Foundation has the potential to lift up thousands of students from low-income families who now have few opportunities for enriching activitiesl. The students will receive extra instructional time and tutoring, as well as a chance to explore art and music.

The announcement of the initiative in Washington, DC, yesterday, drew governors from Colorado and Connecticut, along with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “We are trying to focus on the opportunity gap,” Duncan told the audience. “We need to close the opportunity gap.”

He invited community nonprofits and volunteers to be part of the effort. “We’d like to partner and bring you into our schools.”

The TIME Collaborative’s approach to expanding time—pulling in community organizations so that teachers don’t have to do it alone—dovetails with own our push for engaging the entire community so that more children are reading proficiently by the end of third grade.

If you think about it, our community solutions are all about meaningful time on task. Many of the best strategies for building school readiness depend on ensuring students have more time to learn the basics that will prepare them for kindergarten. Likewise, quality summer learning programs deliver more instructional time so that students don’t slip behind over the summer.

And reducing chronic absence is one of the best ways to ensure students spend more time on task. A longer school day or a longer school year won’t work unless students are showing up for class regularly.

But the TIME Collaborative initiative is about more than afterschool programs. The schools that participate will go through  a year- long planning process to rethink the entire school schedule. This idea is to provide to develop a school day that provides”a rigorous, well-rounded curriculum for all students; offers individualized help for students who are struggling; uses data and technology to inform and improve instruction; improves collaboration among teachers; provides enrichment opportunities in the arts, music and other areas critical to development; and promotes a culture of high achievement,” according to Monday’s press release.

“This is not just about adding time and doing more of the same,” said Luis Ubinas, president of the Ford Foundation. “It’s about creating a learning day that suits the needs of our children, the realities of working parents and the commitment of our teachers. It’s a total school makeover.”

Ford will provide $3 million in capacity-building grants over the next three years to the districts involved in Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee. The districts will pay for the extra time with a mix of federal and state dollars, and NCTL will provide technical assistance.