Two Southern Indiana school corporations — Silver Creek School Corporation and Borden-Henryville School Corporation — voted Monday night to push back the first day of school by two weeks.
The first day of school is now Aug. 12, with the first day for teachers Aug. 10. The original start date was July 29.
“One of the driving forces is Prosser technical training school in New Albany,” board member Kevin Puckett said. “When Prosser decided to delay it, we did the same thing ... With the way Prosser works, the seniors go the first half of the day and then juniors go second half of the day. If Prosser wasn’t open, those kids would have been sitting there doing nothing for two weeks.”
For a brand-new school district like Borden-Henryville, the postponement gives the schools extra time to work on contracts for teachers and bus drivers and finish up construction. Puckett said even without the pandemic, the schedule would have been very tight to start on July 29, after formally splitting from West Clark Community Schools July 1.
He added that if the schools started on the scheduled date, none of the students would have gotten any Chromebooks. The extra two weeks ensure that all students can have one.
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“It gives us a more time to get a better handle of the pandemic and how we’re going to handle the schools,” he said. “With the guidelines going around the pandemic, things are changing every day. There’s new guidelines and restrictions. This gives us more time to get things in place to have a safe place for the kids.
The same goes for Silver Creek. Board member Doug Coffman noted that they weren't too concerned with neighboring school districts’ decisions, but the extra time allows schools to finish construction, prepare teachers for the upcoming year and ensure all students have Chromebooks.
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“Just in case we have to go to an e-learning model later on, we felt like last semester of last school year was probably not the most productive because our teachers were not trained. It was dumped on them,” he said. “It gives teachers a chance to get some training that they weren’t able to do last semester of last year.”
Coffman advocated for the students’ need to be in school and expects further changes only if the state mandates a change in the calendar.
“Let’s be committed to it,” he said. “I think there’s a very little chance of it moving, but that may change with the governor’s decision.”
The board members of New Albany-Floyd County Consolidated School Corporation will meet Thursday at 6 p.m., in which one of the action items on the agenda is to consider a revised 2020-2021 school calendar after discussing a school reopening plan.
David J. Kim: DKim@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @_DavidJKim. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: https://ift.tt/2Z9C9oV.
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July 22, 2020 at 01:24AM
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Two Southern Indiana school corporations push back first day of school by 2 weeks - Courier Journal
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