Jefferson City Board of Education: Early dismissal calendar not approved
JEFFERSON CITY, MO (KMIZ)
The Jefferson City Board of Education met Monday evening and one item on its agenda was to vote on the approval of the proposed early dismissal school calendar for the upcoming school year.
JC School's teachers have requested more time for professional development and planning.
During a vote on the upcoming school calendar, the early dismissal calendar was not approved by the Jefferson City Board of Education.
Educators came up with an early dismissal schedule that would allow for 70 minutes for professional development for teachers. The secondary schools run off of a 7-period daily class schedule. Teachers asked to end each class 10 minutes early to provide an early dismissal almost each Monday of the school year for more time for teacher's development and planning.
Board member, Ken Enloe, voted to approve the early dismissal calendar. He said teachers worked hard on COVID re-entry planning over the past year, he believes educators have strategically planned how to improve student academic achievement with this additional time.
"Based on the fact that the staff developed and proposed and worked incredible hard to execute the COVID re-entry plan, I believe there's every reason to believe that they will, in fact, use this plan to result in an improved student achievement so that's why I am encouraging us to improve it," said Enloe.
Other board members voted against the plans for early dismissal because of the impact it could cause on parents and students. Board member, Stephanie Johnson, said so many families are already struggling due to the pandemic, an early dismissal could cause an even heavier load for them to deal with.
"We're asking our families 60 percent of which live in some level of poverty to fit that bill of much needed time and I am just not comfortable doing that and I want to support our teachers and I Want to give them everything that they need but I can just not put it on the backs of so many families that struggle in our community," said Johnson.
Board member, Brad Bates, like others on the board, said he didn't understand how less time for students in the classroom could benefit from helping them achieve an improvement in academics.
"We talked about how in seat helps our children and we have to have them in seat and we are proud that we've been able to get them in seat and that's a tremendous accomplishment we can't speak out of the other side of our mouth and say, but if we reduce this time it will help them even more, it's counter-intuitive to what we're saying," said Bates.
School board members agreed to the possibility of reviewing early dismissal for the second semester. As a new leadership team is coming on board, it plans to collaborate and come up with the best solution moving forward.
