Sean C. Morgan
The District 55 School Board approved two changes to the calendar this year, adding days and setting early release days for junior high and high school students.
The board approved the addition of up to three days to make up for weather-related school cancellation last week and five early release days for high school and junior high teachers Monday night.
The School Board asked Supt. Larry Horton to find out whether it could legally hold school on Martin Luther King Day next Monday. If it is legal, school will be in session Monday. The board also directed that school be in session on Feb. 16, Presidents Day.
The board’s decision directed Supt. Horton to work with staff to find out whether a third make-up day was feasible and when to do it if so. If Martin Luther King Day is not an allowable school day, Supt. Horton was directed to work with staff to find a different day if feasible.
Board Member Barbara Snow told the board that adding three days to the end of the year or after the current trimester would make no difference regarding the classes that missed days. The days were missed in the second trimester not the third where students will be taking different classes.
Voting for the make-up days were board members Snow, Tim Crocker, Scott Proctor, Milt Moran, Dave VanDerlip, Diane Gerson and Chairman Don Hopkins. Mike Reynolds voted no. John Dundon abstained for “personal reasons.”
Reynolds supported two make-up days but not three. In light of current funding issues, it offered an opportunity to save some money.
The board ran into difficulty trying to schedule the days before the end of the year. It discussed potentially changing grading days and parent-teacher conferences to provide an additional day of instruction.
The state allows emergency closures, without making up the time, of up to 14 hours, about two days, Supt. Horton told the board. In addition, Sweet Home already exceeds the state’s minimum requirements for student seat time leaving the possibility of no make-up days.
“There is a perception that we probably need to maintain with (instruction time) with our community saying there’s a value to those three days in our district,” Supt. Horton said.
Chairman Don Hopkins said he had a difficult time not making up those days when just recently the board spent three meetings talking about 15 minutes of instructional time.
The local Boy Scouts council takes about 15 minutes of seat time to provide information, and the district had discussed eliminating that access for all outside groups to protect instructional time.
“That was dealing with only 15 minutes,” Hopkins said. “The whole crux of it had to do with 15 minutes per group. This time, we’re looking at three days of instruction.”
“Staff told us we need instructional time,” Board Member Milt Moran said.
Junior high and high school students will be released early five days this year, the same days as early release for elementary schools. Early releases will be on Jan. 21, Feb. 11, April 14, May 12 and June 10.
Principals Pat Stineff, high school, and Hal Huschka, junior high, proposed the early release days to work with teachers on improving reading in the schools so they meet “adequate yearly progress requirements” on state tests.
“Last year, our reading scores were not as good as we’d like,” Stineff told the School Board. “They were pretty bad.”
Junior high and high school teachers have not necessarily been taught to teach reading, Stineff said. Junior high and high school teachers are specialized in other areas, like math, science or social science.
“We want to teach them to teach the kids to read in their subject areas,” Stineff said. That means developing reading improvement strategies across the curriculum, teaching the children to read a science text and to comprehend and retain the information.
Reading education does not end with the sixth grade, Stineff said. It should and does continue through high school.
Still, reading scores have been low and reached even lower last year.
“I think maybe the reading tests helped to bring that inadequacy to light,” Stineff said.
The early release days would begin with a workshop from a guest speaker who has provided good results during in-service periods, Stineff said. The remaining early release days, teachers would work with an in-district teacher trained to help them improve their skill at teaching reading across the curriculum.
The early release days would be in effect only this year, Stineff said. Rather than put off the training to in-service days later on or next school year, Stineff hopes that it will improve reading test results this year. Testing continues through May. She would have preferred to start the training in October.
All board members voted for the proposal.