(Seguin) — There is a good chance that Seguin ISD students this fall will be returning to school one week earlier. Instead of returning on Aug. 20, students could be heading back to class on Aug. 13.
The start date for the 2020-2021 school year, however, might be just the only thing that school district officials can really begin to plan as they still face many unknowns during this COVID-19 pandemic.
Trustees met Thursday night to begin discussion on possible changes to what had already been its adopted school calendar. In fact, the calendar for the upcoming school year was approved about a month before students were told not to return to class after Spring Break.
Superintendent Dr. Matthew Gutierrez says the fluidness of the situation and the fear that the contagious virus might again interrupt classrooms this coming school year has created plenty of discussion anywhere from year-round school to possible intercessions throughout the school year.
However, for the immediate future, Gutierrez says the school board will be asked to consider another calendar – one that not only pushes up the start date but also offers a few minor adjustments.
“We’ve got two options that we can look at. We’ve got the adopted calendar that is approved by the board of trustees and then we have this calendar that we are looking at and with this calendar, we have made some changes to start kids back earlier and so there are two reasons. Kids have lost two months of instruction and so what we are wanting is to add some additional dates soon so we can start to intervene and get these kids on track. So, we want to start kids earlier in August because what if there is a big resurgence in November or December and we are having to close and we lose out in instruction. Thankfully, we have some extra days that we were able to take advantage of in August. It is not drastically different from the calendar that we have adopted. It’s the additional days in August. It reduces the number of professional learning days for teachers. What we are doing right now is we have built in professional learning days that are required in May. So, teachers are going to be engaging in professional learning. So, that’s really the intent and purpose of the calendar that we are presenting today,” said Gutierrez.
Laying out those proposed changes for the trustees was Sean Hoffmann, the chief communications officer for the Seguin ISD.
“We essentially bumped up our teachers coming back two days. They were to come back on the 10th originally and we are considering having them come back on Aug. 6. That’s the major change. If we go down a little bit and look at October 23, we did have a teacher staff day and a student holiday on that date originally built it. It was again for professional learning but in order to keep the 187 day teacher contract in place, we made that a holiday. So the Oct. 23 day would be a district holiday. The other change you will notice is on Jan. 4. That day was originally scheduled to be a teacher workday but again in order to consider that 187 teacher contract calendar, we made that an additional day on the winter holiday break. So, really there are no more additional changes in the second semester,” said Hoffmann.
Gutierrez says as for a year-round schedule, he does not expect one to make it to the table this year. However, he does believe the idea is worth considering.
“I do feel like there could be a lot of benefits for our school district because of the population that we serve to look and consider moving in that direction being that 70 percent or more are on free and reduced lunch and have a lot of challenges at home and so the gaps are pretty wide and especially now considering that a lot of kids rely heavily on that teacher to provide them with instruction and where you have other kids that rely on the teacher but they also have very enriching home lives and so now the concern is those gaps continuing to wide and so it makes that calendar with the intercessions specifically very attractive,” said Gutierrez.
Although the district this coming year is sticking to a more traditional calendar, Gutierrez says he does have plans to appoint a task force to begin planning for the 2021-2022 school year.
“So the hope will be to have a task force engage in some research and the task force consisting of key stakeholders that I would work with my team to identify business leaders, parents and staff and again, I want to remind you that a task force needs to be relatively small because when a group is too big, it’s hard to be effective. So with the hopes of this task force really looking at research behind a year round or intercession calendar, looking at other districts that have that calendar and looking at the impact that it has had on student achievement. I can tell you that some of those districts have high achievement and high poverty, so they are obviously benefiting. This group of people would look at all of those school districts along with research and begin to just develop – if that’s the direction we are looking at – develop like a skeleton calendar and not get involved with this day here or this day here because that is tedious and you can’t ever reach consensus,” said Gutierrez.
Gutierrez says no matter the debate among adults, there really has to be a plan that is best for students.
“There’s been a lot of interest in that. There’s also been
parents that don’t agree with that because you are never going to get 100 percent on the calendar but what we need to keep in mind is we are in the business of students and that’s what we need to keep in mind with this calendar that we are going to look at. Sometimes we want the calendar to fit our schedules as adults – as parents because that works for us or as teachers because that works for us. We have to think about the needs that our students have and it’s ever more critical now because our students that typically experience summer slide, this year, they are experiencing spring slide and summer slide and so we really needed to take a hard close look at a different way of learning because it’s not just going to be the year of catch up next year. This is going to have an impact that is going to last for years and how do we make up ground with kids utilizing a calendar that can help us bridge that divide that is even bigger,” said Gutierrez.
Gutierrez reminds the community that no matter what calendar is agreed upon in June, things are still subject to change and says as we all know, it can change with little notice.
“And some of you may be wondering, well what if school doesn’t start then or what if we are closed in November? We are working on different scenarios and I think part of that work is going to include how the calendar would be impacted for each scenario and we will have an opportunity to come back likely in June because I developed a reopening of school task force that is kicking off on Monday and so we will come back in June and have the calendar that is the official calendar and then look at how could this calendar be impacted with scenario A, B, C, D, E and hopefully address some of those questions at that time,” said Gutierrez.
In preparing for the fall, the Texas Education Agency has stated that the new school year “is likely to be disrupted.”
It is also encouraging each district to do what it can to help lessen the impact of its students in their own communities.
Prior to any official action by the school board in June, district officials say they will be providing the community with an opportunity to chime in on the proposed changes to the upcoming school calendar. They say it is important that the public is involved in the process.
A survey or other type of questionnaire form are expected to be created soon to allow for public input.
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