During
Public Comment at the April 19, 2011 school board meeting, I pointed out to the
school board that the 2011-2012 school calendar which had been reviewed and approved
by the school board in 2010 had the incorrect total number of days on the
calendar. The total number of days
listed at the bottom of the 2011-2012 calendar showed 174 days for the school
year. However, counting each of the days
on the calendar only totaled to 170 days.
The total number of days for each of the quarters was also shown
incorrectly thus resulting in the 174 days being shown. At the April board meeting, I verified with
the school board that they had approved the calendar as listed on the website
and asked that they please update the total number of days on the calendar to
correctly reflect the days marked on the calendar. During my 3 minutes, I also presented a few other
concerns to be looked into by the school board as well as asking for a response
from my December 2010 Public Comments questions. This was also the school board meeting that
was interrupted by the storm.
On
May 17, 2011, I emailed Ruth Ann Newman the board president at the time and
John Laughlin asking for follow up answers from my December 2010 Public Comments
as well as informing them that the school calendar had not been updated since the
last board meeting. I also pointed out
that the 2011-2012 school calendar showed that school was set to resume on
Monday January 2, 2012 which was a federal holiday and that most companies are
closed that day. I received a scathing email response from our superintendent Dianne Brown at 10:47AM that same
morning thanking me for voicing my concerns pertaining to the Fox C-6 School
District followed by the statement, “After reading your concerns, many are false
and inaccurate.” I guess this is
her way of informing the school board that I do not know what I am talking
about and they might as well stop reading from there. Well, Ms. Brown addressed 7 of my concerns in
her email response. Item number 7 addressed
the school calendar issue and she stated in her response that it had been updated
and corrected. You might ask, how was it
corrected? The totals at the bottom of
the calendar were removed as well as the quarterly day counts and total day
count for the year. The 174 days was
probably a holdover from the old calendar when Missouri required school
districts to have a minimum of 174 school days in a year for 5 day per week
school districts. Missouri changed the
rules on school calendars a few years ago and now allows fewer school days as long
as the school district meets the 1,044 hours of school time per calendar year.
So,
the 2011-2012 school calendar was updated on May 17, 2011 but nothing was ever
done to change the fact that our school district was resuming school on a federal
holiday on January 2, 2012. So, I
brought this question up again in August with Ruth Ann Newman simply asking her
about the calendar thinking that possibly no one realized that Monday January
2, 2012 was a federal holiday and didn’t notice that I had pointed it out in my
email since this was never changed. I also
thought that someone else in the district might have noticed the calendar issue
and voiced their concerns as I didn’t want to be the only person to complain.
<g>
The
last time that January 2 occurred on a Monday was in 2006 and Fox did not
resume school until Tuesday January 3rd. The rules for federal holidays are that if
the holiday falls on a Sunday, then the holiday is observed on the Monday following
the holiday.
I
thought that possibly the district might notice that the we were going to
school on a federal holiday and possibly make a change at the December 2011
school board meeting. My friend Scott
Steele spoke with Dan Smith about the calendar before the board meeting and Dan
didn’t realize that we were going back to school on a federal holiday and told
Scott that he would bring it up at the board meeting. I attended the December 2011 board meeting
and there was nothing on the agenda for the calendar and following the meeting
nothing was changed regarding the calendar.
So, on December 20, 2011 I emailed my concern to Ruth Ann Newman, John
Laughlin, Dianne Brown and the schoolboard@fox.k12.mo.us
email address regarding the calendar and asking them “Why is the Fox C-6 school district scheduled to resume school
following the Winter Break on the State and Federal holiday of Monday January
2, 2012?” I pointed out in my email that the last time that January 2nd
occurred on a Monday, school did not resume until Tuesday January 3rd. I also pointed out in my email that only 2
school districts out of 57 in the St. Louis area were planning on resuming
school on January 2, 2012. I was also
asking this question because many parents that I had spoken to had not even
looked at the school calendar and were just assuming that we were off of school
on Monday January 2, 2012 since they themselves were off of work that day and I
was beginning to wonder how many kids were going to miss school that day
because they didn’t know school was resuming on a Federal Holiday.
I
received the following reply from Mr. Tim Crutchley concerning my email that
same day:
Mr. Simpson,
Thank you for inquiring about our calendar.
The 2011-2012 school calendar has been public for 2 years now and the day we
are returning to school from this break has not changed during that time. While
the district does recognize some state and/or federal holidays, we do not
recognize them all. We also do not build our calendar around other school
district calendars because what works for some districts does not work for us
and conversely what works for our school district may not work for others. You
reference the 2005-2006 calendar and obviously we have taken a different
approach to the current year with our last day being today, the 21st of
December not the 22nd of December which was the last day for that calendar. I
hope this helps, please feel free to email or call me if you have any further
questions regarding our calendars.
Tim Crutchley
Assistant Superintendent
Elsberry
R-II was the other school district that resumed school on January 2, 2012. I thought that maybe it was quite difficult
to change your school calendar once it was set in stone with MO DESE. However, I spoke with MO DESE to see if it
was possible to change the school calendar during the school year and I was
told that calendars are changed all the time.
I also had them do a quick search of all of the school districts in the
state to see how many school districts were attending school on January 2, 2012
and there were roughly 50 or so schools that did attend that day. So, I guess Fox wasn’t that different after
all.
The
next time that January 2nd falls on a Monday is during the 2016-2017
school year.