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!

I attended the CSD calendar information session last night at
Clairemont. Present from CSD were Thomas Van Soelen and Sherry
Breunig. Only about 6 or 7 parents, including myself, were present.
The meeting had gone for about 1 1/2 hours before I had to leave, but
to try and make a very long story short, here is what I took from the
meeting:

The proposed change to a “non-traditional” calendar is being driven
mostly (not entirely, but mostly) by a desire to provide
academic “intervention” to at-risk students at DHS and Renfroe.
Thus, the Superintendent charged the CSD staff with the task of
proposing an alternative calendar that would provide multiple breaks
during the school year to allow for such “intervention” periods
(which, since they are outside of the 180-day school year, I assume
would have to be voluntary on the part of the student?).

Also cited was a desire to give the teaching staff a break in October
and February to prevent burnout, although I again got the impression
that they were referring more to staff at DHS and Renfroe than at the
primary level.

For the remaining children, Dr. Van Soelen predicted that the City
would offer some kind of camps or enrichmnt activities, but could not
guarantee any details. My impression is that options will be
available, but parents will be on their own to make arrangments and
pay for it. It is not clear how far beyond the traditional camp
options (i.e., Animal Crackers, YMCA, Decatur Rec) the choices will
go.

When asked why a traditional calendar option was not presented,
Sherry Breunig replied, in essence, that if such an option was
presented, the majority of people would vote for the traditional
option. But she also said that given what she was hearing in the
meeting and online, perhaps a traditional option should be added.

Most of the obvious pros and cons (childcare, vacations, swim teams,
summer jobs, intra-district calendar differences, etc.) were
discussed at some length. When asked the question below (why can’t
we just do things like we used to in the old days/New
York/California, etc.), the response was that the CSD schedule is
driven by the high school, and apparently high school class
scheduling – like everything else in eduction nowadays -
has “evolved”. We now have “block scheduling”, “AB” scheduling, and
a bunch of other stuff I didn’t understand except for the fact that
it makes scheduling the school year very difficult, and a post-Labor
Day start impossible.

Finally, because of the changes being suggested, this is all being
put out for discussion unusually early in the calendar cycle, which
perhaps accounts for the low turnout at the meeting last night. The
Calendar Committee will not be presenting any recommendations to the
School Board until early 2009, and thus public input can be given up
til that time. I think CSD will listen to what the community has to
say and respond accordingly, including the addition of a traditional
calendar option.

Ron Stay
315 Mimosa Drive