The aptly named “calendar committee” of City of Decatur Schools has come up with two new calendar proposals for the 2009 school year in response to parents’ requests for a later school start date and school employees request for a mid-semester break to evaluate and redirect student performance.

The two new calendars are posted (in pdf format) on the CDS website.

Option A starts a week earlier (August 3rd) than the current adopted schedule and gives week long breaks in October and February that weren’t previously included in the calendar.

Option B starts two weeks later (August 24th) than the current adopted schedule, lasts three weeks longer (June 18th), and again provides a week long break in October and a 3 day break in February not previously included.

From what I can deduce, the extra time off is created primarily by either starting the school year earlier, ending the school year later, and condensing Teacher Work Days into longer blocks of time.

A letter to the community also mentions talks the Superintendent and Asst. Superintendent have already had with child care providers in the area and all involved believe that services would be available to those that needed them during these new extended breaks.

The reason the school system is bringing this idea forward so early is that they want to give residents time to provide feedback. They have even created a short online survey for parents, students, employees and school council members to take, asking which new schedule you prefer and if you have any additional comments.

Further detail and some initial reaction was recently documented by Ron Stay, who attended the March 3rd Calendar Info Session on the Winnona Park Message Board. (The full note is included in the continuation) In it, Ron states that the main impetus given by CDS to create the new schedule is to “provide academic ‘intervention’ to at-risk students at DHS and Renfroe” in the form of these additional weeks off during the school year. Also, Ron states that some members wonder why the current “traditional schedule” isn’t provided as an option in the survey.

Since I don’t have a dog (or child) in this fight, I will leave the opinion up to my readers. What will/did you tell CDS about this plan? CDS has given us plenty of time to discuss since they won’t present anything to the School Board until early 2009, but let’s get the ball rolling!

Thanks go to Cherie for pointing this out! Read the rest of this entry »

Blogger Bud Thomas Wheatley reports over on CL’s newly-redesigned Fresh Loaf…

Bill McKibben, author of End of Nature and Deep Economy, will speak at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 11, at the Holy Trinity Episcopal Parish in Decatur (map here). The event is co-sponsored by the Georgia Center for the Book and Georgia Interfaith Power and Light. A collection of his essays, The Bill McKibben Reader, goes on sale tomorrow. One of his more recent works, Fight Global Warming Now – The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community, is worth a look, judging that the General Assembly this year isn’t taking any steps to address the phenomenon.

McKibben’s writings have been informing audiences about global warming long before An Inconvenient Truth made climate change a dinner table conversation topic. In fact, Al Gore attributes much of his passion to the cause to McKibben. According to this Wikipedia entry Gore wrote in 2007 “when I was serving in the Senate, Bill McKibben’s descriptions of the planetary impacts… made such an impression on me that it led, among other things, to my receiving the honorific title ‘Ozone Man’ from the first president Bush.”

McKibben writes for many big name pubs like The New York Times, The Atlantic and Harpers. Plus he’s a scholar in residence at Middlebury College, just down the street from where my mom now lives.