If the principal says homework should be about 30 minutes a night, and you're adding up and coming up with 39.5 minutes a night, then there's a problem that you might count on principal backing to address. These problems come up pretty easily when you're dealing with two teachers, and one doesn't know what the other is doing.
For example... if the GT teacher is assigning math, why should your DD do math assignments from the homeroom teacher? And more importantly... IF IT'S ENRICHMENT, WHY IS IT HOMEWORK?!
Seems to me like that's an easy cut.
As for reading, this depends on the child, but in our case, we filled out the reading log for a while on DD's behalf, without policing this at all, because her reading skills were already far advanced, and you'd have a tougher task in preventing her from reading than you'd have in ensuring she did 15 minutes a day. After a couple of months, we just reached out to the teacher and told her we weren't going to fill it out anymore, and she immediately agreed with our reasoning, no argument necessary.
So, there's another 15 minutes a night gone. Together, these two changes get you well under the principal's 30-minute guideline. Whether that's still excessive is another conversation, but it would seem to be one that's unlikely to get much support from your school.
