WCSD: No year-round calendar yet
Watson Chapel teachers recommended the school district not consider lengthening its 2024-2025 calendar to an early start.
Frankie Hemphill, chairwoman of the WCSD Personnel Policy Committee, suggested to the school board Monday that operating on a July-to-June class calendar would interrupt ongoing upward trends in student performance, and Superintendent Tom Wilson agreed. A year-round calendar was not on the agenda, but Hemphill and Wilson mentioned the possibility the same night the Pine Bluff School District approved one for next school year.
“As far as our librarians are concerned, some of the librarians’ time off during the summer would be like one week,” Hemphill said, explaining some of those employees are on contracts of 200 or more days. “The other thing is that we actually wanted to see how it went with someone else before we jumped into that. Then, another thing we considered is that we got our kids finally moving in the right direction as far as testing is concerned. We don’t want to upset the apple cart.”
Campus leaders spent much of the 55-minute meeting going over recent trends among students. Among the trends:
∎ High school students have improved in word study skills since October. Results for this month have shown a growth in students ready or exceeding from 2% to 5% and increase in those close to meeting the benchmark from 42% to 53%, leaving a drop in those in need of support from 56% to 42%.
∎ 99% of junior high students (grades 6-8) took the Renaissance STAR reading exam — at least 95% is required under state law — and saw 1% increases among those ready or exceeding and those close to meeting the benchmark.
∎ 82% of students at Coleman Elementary (grades 2-5) were predicted to be at high risk of not meeting end-of-year grade level benchmarks, according to a pie chart, but the school already exceeded expectations with only 55% in need of support, a 7-point drop from the beginning of the year.
Pine Bluff School District officials cited preventing burnout among teachers and students and guarding against learning loss among chief reasons for implementing a year-round schedule. Classes in the PBSD for 2024-2025 will begin July 31.
Wilson said PBSD officials examined the yearround option for more than a year.
“We haven’t really had a chance to do that and have a training session with the board and go over it with the state,” Wilson said. “There are still some situations involving [Southeast Arkansas] College on course offerings and things like that. … Right now, I also feel it’s a little too late to get this going for next year, and we have a lot of other things going right now.”
Hemphill told the board some parents outside the WCSD would like to enroll their kids in the district if it sticks with a traditional August-to-May class calendar, which she called a good thing.
Teachers will vote on a draft for the 2024-2025 calendar for a later recommendation to Wilson and the board and will revisit the year-round calendar idea for 2025-2026, Hemphill said. As far as fighting learning loss without an earlier start to school, she suggested recommending appropriate summer programs to parents to meet their children’s needs.
“Whatever kind of program, like if a child has a reading problem, then make a recommendation for books they can read,” Hemphill said. “There are programs they can use for the summer months to improve their own child’s reading ability.”