Jeanie Carter, longest-serving member of Marietta School Board, cuts the cake with board members Dr. Scott Allen, center, and Tom Smith joining in the celebration Tuesday night honoring the three who are retiring. Carter is retiring after four terms; Allen has served the board since 2006; and Smith joined the board in 2001.
jgillooly@mdjonline.com
MARIETTA - The Marietta school board voted 7-0 Tuesday to approve a 2010-11 school calendar that begins school on Aug. 12.
Last week, Superintendent Dr. Emily Lembeck advised the board to adopt a calendar that begins the school year on Aug. 16, offering three days off during the week of Thanksgiving, a full week off in February and April and ending school on May 27. That's in addition to a winter break from Dec. 23 to Jan. 4.
Last month, Lembeck unveiled four calendar options for the board to select. The other three included a calendar that begins on Aug. 10, one that begins on Aug. 11 and a "balanced" calendar that begins on Aug. 2. A balanced calendar begins earlier in the summer, but offers additional weeks off during the school year.
After Lembeck released the four calendar options last month, she asked each school's governance team to poll their schools and pick their first and second favorite calendars. The balanced calendar option received the most votes as the first choice, while the Aug. 16 calendar received the most votes as the second choice from the 11 school governance teams.
Lembeck said she recommended the runner-up Aug. 16 calendar rather than the balanced calendar because Marietta's Sixth Grade Academy is undergoing $6.5 million in SPLOST renovations over the summer. Starting the school year on Aug. 2, under the balanced calendar, would cut the window of time between the construction work and the first day of school too close for comfort.
During Tuesday's meeting, board member Jill Mutimer made a motion to revise Lembeck's calendar to start on Aug. 12 with a full week off at Thanksgiving. Lembeck endorsed the idea and the board approved it.
During the public comment section of the meeting, Jana Chesney, whose daughter attends Hickory Hills Elementary School, argued in favor of a later school start date.
"The very hot weather that we have in August often must keep elementary school students from being on the playground. Studies do show that that is pretty important for their physical and emotional well being," she said.
Moreover, Chesney said this year her child's class was overcrowded during the first few days of school, but Lembeck told her nothing could be done until the student population stabilized around Labor Day. Other parts of the country, she said, start much later in the school year.
"She had to wait for much of the other country's time tables to catch up with ours in order to answer the needs of our students," Chesney said.
After Labor Day, Lembeck did end up adding another class at Hickory Hills to accommodate the extra students, she said.
Another speaker to address the board was Marietta Middle School teacher Robert Meaders, whose children attend West Side Elementary. Meaders, as a faculty representative of the middle school's governance team, urged the board to vote for the balanced calendar since most of the school governance teams had voted for that option.
"We continue to fail them by maintaining this antiquated, agrarian calendar," Meaders said. "By not allowing our students the time to decompress and absorb under this improved curriculum, we're setting many of them up for failure while we argue over personal agendas and vacations."
Meaders said he would hate to see the board "sacrifice achievement system wide for the sake of an unfortunate situation at one of our schools."
From the teachers and parents he talked with, he said there was a perception that the board wasn't listening.
"To make us feel as if we have a voice and then to discredit that voice is a slap in the face to teachers who still choose to believe in the system," he said. "Teachers deal often enough with the misconceptions with our work in the classroom and lack of professional respect. Now to have our own board of education treat us with the same indifference would further widen the divide between the boardroom and the classroom."
Lembeck said she hopes the majority of school employees don't perceive her recommendation as a slap in the face.
Board Chairman Tony Fasola said he didn't believe the calendar served as a divide as Meaders suggested.
"As I've discussed with many people in the last couple days, both teachers and stakeholders, there's no perfect calendar. There's no perfect solution. We try to do the best we can to accommodate the stakeholders and our employees, and you know, I think this is the best option at this time," Fasola said.
Mutimer balked at Meaders' suggestion that failing to adopt a balanced calendar impacted student achievement.
"I personally don't think this calendar that we are adopting is sacrificing system-wide achievement because that means we've been doing it every year since we've had calendars, and we've been increasing our graduation rate, it's above 80 percent now. All of our schools made AYP last year," Mutimer said.
At the same time, Mutimer said the board would consider a balanced calendar option next year.
"I'm personally not indifferent," she said.
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Most teachers are pleased with the current calendar and the leadership at MCS and don't complain endlessly about the superintendent. I suggest you focus on your classroom.
Our school calendar seems to be driven by the high school needing to complete their first semester before the Winter Break. When you start counting back from December 23, include two full weeks of break mid-term and at Thanksgiving, you end up starting school in the beginning of August.
Bottom line- there will never be an option that will make everyone happy.
Mr. Meaders should focus on teaching Social Studies where too many students are failing -and get a LIFE.
Could the Central Office have done a better job in allowing more time for parents to vote? Yes.
Could the Central Office have come up with a better way for voting? Absolutely.
Did the system know that the construction would prevent selecting Option 4? You got it.
But, would/could things have gone differently if parents were more active and committed to participating in their child's education. ABSOLUTELY!!!
School is not a daycare - nor a dumping ground.
Yes - they could do things better. But who's going to make sure they do if parents don't care?
It's change for the sake of change, nothing more.
They do not realize the added cost on parents by going to a balanced school year. If teachers have children in school, they can be home with them. Families that have both parents working would have to make arrangements for thier children which could be costly.
They really need to quit acting like the schools overwhelmingly made AYP! The middle school only made it by ONE child so I hear.
Good job Mr. Meaders for speaking up on behalf of staff. Excellent points made. Too bad it was wasted on folks who already made up their minds before hand.
Also, according to Mrs. Chesney,
"The very hot weather that we have in August often must keep elementary school students from being on the playground. Studies do show that that is pretty important for their physical and emotional well being," What studies are you talking about? Being on the playground?? Lets just keep our kids inside the house from everything potentially dangerous in the world so they never grow up and become contributing citizens to society. Make them scared of everything...