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 »