Hot Springs schools switching calendar

HOT SPRINGS — The Hot Springs School Board voted Tuesday to switch to a nontraditional school calendar beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

The board’s decision came after the district’s Personnel Policies Committee presented recent survey findings showing a high favorability for the change.

Committee Chair Jessica Jeffers spoke on behalf of the district’s certified and classified staff.

“We sent out a survey with two different calendar options, to also ask for feedback ahead of time,” she said. “With those, we then created two options to vote on. We received about 54 comments back of feedback, that we did take into consideration, as we built the traditional and the nontraditional calendar that went to vote.”

Of the 284 employees who voted — 200 of them certified employees and the others noncertified — 70.5% were in favor of the nontraditional calendar option. Further, 57% of the parents who responded to the district’s survey were in favor.

According to the new calendar, this fall students will start school on July 29 and go through June 6 next year. Breaks, during which there will be no classroom days, include Sept. 2-6, Oct. 4-11, Nov. 25-29, Dec. 23-Jan.7, Jan. 20, Feb. 14-21, March 24-April 4, and May 23-26.

Superintendent Stephanie Nehus said the number of days students will be in school is exactly the same as it has been with the traditional calendar — 178 days. There are simply more breaks throughout the school year, she said.

“The major concern from parent feedback was child care,” she said.

“And many said if we knew that plan, we would have provided feedback on option two [the calendar approved]. And so I am going to be working with all of our community partners for various options for parents as well as with our staff to provide options here within our district. We are hoping to be able to meet any parents’ needs that are out there.”

Board member Cindy Rogers noted, regarding the school providing child care, that it can be used for enrichment, with possibly even students being involved to go toward their required community service hours.

“Our goal is to provide some intervention and enrichment camps,” Nehus said, noting she and Taryn Echols, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, “have already talked about that and we’ll be talking with our staff on those weeks.

She said the district plans to provide extended day care services if that is what a parent or student needs.