The Levelland ISD School Board held a regular meeting earlier in the month with updates regarding a district calender survey and SPECO being the big ticket items.
LISD Superintendent Becky McCutchen explained that the District Advisory Committee asked the district to put out a survey to see where the interest or thought process was regarding a four-day calender verus the traditional five-day calender than spans Monday through Friday.
After putting together a survey and allowing the public to cast their votes, McCutchen presented the statistics to the board. Out of 1,258 responses received, 42% were students, 38.6% were parents, 4.6% were community members or business owners, 12.9% were teachers, 5% were other district staff, 1% were administrators and 37.9% were classified as other.
The current law requires 75,600 instructional minutes as a minimum and 187 teacher days as a minimum.
In regard to calender options, 21.9% were in favor of the traditional school calender that would be Monday through Friday, while 78.1% were in favor of the four-day calender.
Concerns raised with the four-day calender were child care with 45.9%, students not receiving breakfast and lunch five days a week with 37.4%, not enough instructional time with students at 18.6%, a decrease in student engagement with 11.4%, the instructional day could be too long for maximum student engagement and learning at 36.3%, and decreased participation in extracurricular events at 20.8%.
Positives made for the fourday calender were flexibility for families with more three day weekends at 58.3%, flexibility to schedule appointments on days when instructional time will not be missed at 58%, student engagement will increase at 44.8%, schedule flexibility for students who have part time jobs at 43.4%, staff morale will increase at 35.8%, would allow for more extracurricular practice time and preparation on the fifth day at 34.6%, would increase enrichment opportunities for students on the fifth day at 26%, staff retention and, or recruitment will increase at 29.8% and student intervention needs addressed weekly at 18.6%.
When asked if student enrollment would increase due to the four-day calender, 51.5% said yes, 13.6% said no and 34.9% said maybe. When asked if a four-day calender would help attract and, or retain staff, 64.1% said yes, 9.1% said no and 27.6% said maybe.
McCutchen also added that the results of the survey were presented to the board during the meeting, however, there were no decision made regarding the calender. The district is currently looking at calender options, but no decisions are expected to be made any time soon.
The district advisory committee will meet December 6 to review the data and possibly make recommendations to the board. Following that first step, the calenders that are proposed will be given to staff within the district to vote on which calender they choose. Once that is accomplished, the staff will come back to the board with a final calender for them to approve in January.
Moving forward with a fourday calender any time soon does not seem to be the case as McCutchen explained there are many questions that need to be answered and keeping the students overall growth needs to be the top priority. While there have been reports and studies of students either benefitting or hurting from the four-day calender, there has been nothing concrete to prove otherwise.
Additionally, McCutchen added they cannot ignore parents concerns especially if day care or other options are needed for the fifth day for students. Currently, McCutchen feels that once a lot of the questions presented can be answered and show benefits to moving to a four-day calender then they will revisit the situation, but as it stands there are too many unknown variables to make that leap into a different calender type.
Another item of conversation is the decision for Levelland ISD to withdraw from the South Plains Educational Co-op, starting in July of next year. LISD will no longer be the fiscal agent for the organization, leaving the other eight districts in the Co-Op to decide on a new fiscal agent.
McCutchen stated that the decision ultimately came from a point of financial responsibility, as LISD had been assisting with the SPECO budget from their own budget. In March, budget plans were being put together and red flags continued to pop up on the SPECO budget. Finding that the SPECO budget was being underfunded by all nine districts, Levelland ISD was having to supplement the budget. Going back five years, according to McCutchen, Levelland ISD had assisted with SPECO’s budget with $1.3 million.
It was explained that the district was paying for things that they were not responsible for such as a portion of a physical therapists salary and their travel. Additionally, McCutchen explained that when transfer students come into the district and their needs become more severe, that cost of educating those students has shown to be increasing continuously.
“While Levelland ISD was receiving a little bit of state money for those students, it was not covering the expense we had to educate those students,” said McCutchen.
It was added that discussions were held in May amongst all superintendents within the co-op and it was explained that LISD was supplementing the budget for at the time 48 students coming