If there was one question answered at Monday’s Goshen Community Schools balanced calender information meeting, it’s that there are still plenty of questions that need to be addressed before any final decision on the subject can be made.
Held in the Prairie View Elementary School cafeteria, the meeting served as the second of five scheduled parent/community meetings spread throughout the district aimed at gauging the possibility of implementing a balanced calender system for the school corporation.
“The reason we’re doing this — and there’s only one reason — is to assist in our students’ achievement,” said GCS Superintendent Bruce Stahly when addressing the gathered crowd Monday. “We’re really just trying to get input from the community.”
Adoption of a balanced calendar would essentially change the length of the corporation’s school sessions, with the most likely option breaking up the calendar into 45-day chunks with a shorter six- to eight-week summer and more breaks, or “intercessions” dispersed throughout the year.
Under such an arrangement, students would still need to attend the full 180 days required in a typical school year, though the dispersion of those school days would be significantly changed.
Learning loss?
According to Alan Metcalfe, principal of West Goshen Elementary School and member of the GCS Balanced Calender Committee, perhaps the biggest selling point for moving to a balanced calendar is that student learning loss over the summer would be drastically reduced due to the shorter summer break, allowing teachers more time to teach while requiring less time for review of past material.
In addition, Metcalfe noted that the increased use of intercessions would give struggling students more frequent opportunities for remediation, while giving on-target students more time to dedicate to enrichmentment and extracurricular activities.
“What we learned is that a balanced calender provides time for more immediate intervention, credit recovery and enrichment,” Metcalfe said. “We also found that it decreases summer learning loss.”
Other benefits touched on by Metcalfe include: more positive attitudes toward school by both staff and students; less student discipline needed; and a less stressful school environment overall.
What are the negatives?
All positive research aside, a majority of the questions asked by members of the crowd Monday reflected an overlying concern over what possible negative effects such a change might have on GCS students and their families.
One such question centered on the corporation’s relatively quick timeframe for evaluating the proposed calendar change.
As plans currently stand, GCS officials hope to have some form of the balance calendar proposal before the board by January 2010, with implementation taking place as soon as the 2010-2011 school year if the proposal is adopted.
Some members of the crowd felt such a timeline is too fast, however, not allowing the corporation or the community enough time to adequately assess the pros and cons of the switch.
“I believe that if you’re going to change,” Stahly said, “a six-month period is adequate to do what we need to do.”
He said the longer a proposal like this is delayed, the greater chance there is for it to simply fall from consideration all together.
Also raised as a concern was the fact that GCS is the only corporation in the area currently considering such a switch. Board Secretary Jane Troup replied that the majority of area schools are waiting to see how such a switch affects GCS before making the leap themselves.
“They’re sitting back to see what we’re doing, rather than going with us,” Troup said. “They’re sitting back and watching what we do.”
More Questions
Other questions raised during Monday’s meeting included:
• Does the research show positive changes for all grades, not just elementary levels?
• How will programs such as International Baccalaureate be affected by the change?
• How would summer school change with the new school calendar?
• Will there be a major curriculum change to go along with the calendar change?
• Will remediation attendance be mandated?
According to Troup, it is exactly these types of questions that the community discussion meetings were designed to address.
“This is a fact-finding mission for us, to see where your thoughts are — to figure out what’s the best direction for our students,” Troup said, noting such questions will be addressed to the best of their ability at the corporation’s future community meetings. “We’re gathering information right now, but we’re only seven people.”
In conclusion, Stahly said that no matter what the final decision on the proposal will be, the corporation cannot sit by and allow the current situation to continue unchanged.
“We can’t just look at our present state and say we’re happy where we are,” Stahly said. “We have to get better somehow. I arranged these meetings to listen to parents, because that’s what we must do. We have a terrific community that we live in, and we just want to make it better.”
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