Calendar Committee
Meeting Minutes
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Present: Steve Connolly, Jeff Thoreck, Kathy Walsh, Debbie Butterworth, Joan Moriarty,
Dwight Ely, Troy Henninger, Janet Hoskin, Alan Hawkins, Kathy Ray, Trish Brigham
Each committee member/school representative shared perspectives from his/her respective school/department about various aspects of the current school calendar. This information will be provided to the committee that is responsible for preparing next year's school calendar. This committee will be created under the guidance of the Policy Committee, relatively soon.
Reports are as follows:
Janet - Community Services and Transportation
*Combined bus service for MS and HS is working out well; buses are better utilized
*Dismissal times at MS and HS have caused traffic problems at the HS. Proposed solution is to dismiss HS first rather than MS as currently being done, and to increase time differential between dismissals to 10 from 5 minutes. MS and HS administrators will look at this option and perhaps pursue this now rather than waiting until next year.
*CS needs to be consulted when early release days are scheduled if there is an expectation that they will be responsible for kids. There are space constraints, ie limited space in the school buildings, yet costly to go off-site.
Troy and Jeff S.- HS
*Haven't noticed any differences with later start time as feel it is really not enough to make an impact, perhaps not enough time to judge
*Professional Development Days- would like to see them grouped, i.e. 4 at the start of the school year and 4 at the end of the school year. Proposed that the first Friday of each month be scheduled as an early release day for purpose of K-12 work.
Joan Moriarty- HS
*Same number of kids are arriving tardy to school, so later start time has not made a difference from that perspective. She did note that tardiness increases between sports seasons.
*The feedback from kids is that they would rather start at 7:30, primarily because of the impact that later release time has on afternoon commitments
Dwight- HS
*Sees benefit to 8AM start as he feels students are more awake and ready for school
*Parent feedback during parent/teacher conferences was favorable toward the later start time.
*Later start time allows for greater ease in conferencing with kids before the start of school.
* Later start time has created more disruption at the end of the day with early releases primarily due to athletics, however, feels the pros outweigh the cons in support of the later start time.
Jeff T.- Athletics
*Fall sports season does involve early release more so than winter and spring, There were several dismissals for field hockey, cross country, golf, - no more than last year, but greater class time lost due to change in schedule
*There has been an effort by ADs to move longer trips to Fridays and Saturdays
*Options to completely eliminate early dismissal are limited. One possibility might be to rearrange the lunch schedule- combining 3 lunches into 2; this is a challenge.
Kathy R. - parent
*Late start time seems to be beneficial for family schedules
*More clubs meeting before school, so this may conflict with goal of allowing kids more sleep in the morning. Clubs are meeting in the morning due to afternoon crunch and the fact that so many students participate in after-school athletics.
Kathy W./Steve- MS
*Staff feel that November is choppy and disruptive- could parent-teacher conferences be held around Election Day? (this should not be an issue for next year as there is no presidential election)
*Staff would like to go back to having the teacher workshop days during the Thanksgiving week
*Post Labor Day start was good
*Suggest scheduling two- day teacher workshops at the end of the week rather than at the beginning
*Early Release- Would be nice to have consistent schedule for these for staff and family planning purposes, i.e. Cumberland who has early release every Wed. Possible to extend hours of remaining days of the week when an early release occurs? There are pros and cons to various models for early release, i.e. Friday early release might pose student attendance issues.
*MS Athletics- there were early dismissals for several competitions. Can we consider changing leagues so that our teams can play schools which are in close geographic proximity? Issue becomes one of fairness in competition for our student athletes.
Debbie- PC
*No issues/concerns with time change
*Would like to return to staff days during the Thanksgiving week
Other- general comments
* Fall seemed to have several interruptions, particularly in November. Can consideration be given to scheduling various testing periods to back-up to interruptions, allowing for more continuous teaching periods.
*The C.I.A. team will be giving input to Calendar Committee re: scheduling of professional development days.
Meeting adjourned at 4:15PM.
