Officials seek input on school calendar: Survey will gauge community of support
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The survey, on page 5-A of today’s edition, asks county residents to rank their school calendar preferences – the traditional, 45-15 and 45-10 calendars. Additional comment space is provided for residents to state the reasons for their preferences.
“We want to get information from the community to see how they feel,” said Warren County Education Association co-president Regina Woodlee, whose organization drafted the survey at the request of the school board.
The school board began considering an alternative calendar for the entire school system earlier this school year as Bobby Ray Elementary began the second year of its two-year, 45-15 pilot program. When school board members approved the pilot program in spring 2001, it was their intention to see if such a program would be feasible for the entire system.
Teacher preference surveys on the issue were conducted separately in November by the school board and the teachers union. Results of both surveys showed a 45-10 calendar to be most popular, followed by the traditional calendar and 45-15 calendar, respectively.
Under a 45-10 calendar, students would begin school around the first of August and would attend four, nine-week (45-day) sessions, followed by three, two-week (10-day) breaks. They would end school around the first of June, with an eight-week summer break. This calendar is a slightly modified version of the 45-15 calendar where students attend nine-week sessions, followed by three-week breaks, with a six-week summer break.
Proponents of the alternative calendars say they are more balanced than the nine-months-on, three-months-off traditional calendar. The strongest advantages of the alternative calendar concept, they say, are the improvement of continuity in curriculum and the reduction of summer learning loss.
Woodlee said she hopes to get as many survey results from as many segments of the community as possible. She said her group will present the results of the survey to school board during a Jan. 23 meeting at the high school, where a public forum will be held to discuss the issue at 5:45 p.m.
School board member and Negotiations Committee chairperson Deborah Watlington said she looks forward to evaluating public response.
“Since this is something which affects everybody, we will heavily consider what the community wants, their consensus. The survey results will be another piece of information to help us make a good decision,” Watlington said.