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Hoover officials delay decision on 2021-22 school calendar

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Hoover school officials on Tuesday delayed a decision regarding the 2021-22 school calendar and instead will seek additional feedback from parents, teachers and students.

A recent survey gave parents, teachers and students three options for calendars. Forty-four percent of 4,260 respondents favored Option C, which would start school in 2021 on Aug. 18 instead of Aug. 11, give students only three days out of school during the week of Thanksgiving instead of the entire week, and give students only nine school days out for Christmas break instead of 11 or 12.

However, there weren’t a lot of differences between Options A and B. Most of the differences dealt with moving a teacher workday or professional development day here or there. So 56 percent of respondents actually favored starting school earlier — on Aug. 11 — and getting a full week out for Thanksgiving and full two weeks out at Christmas.

Superintendent Kathy Murphy noted that Option C, with the later start date, would mean there would be 12 fewer instructional days in the second semester than the first semester, while Options A and B would provide only a 10-day difference.

Regarding Option C, “philosophically, that doesn’t feel good or right to me as an educator,” Murphy said.

With high school students switching classes for the second semester, teachers would have even less time to teach the same amount of material in the second semester, she said.

Assistant Superintendent Tera Simmons, who led the effort to assess calendar options, said she wants to pull back, do another survey to better assess priorities and then design a calendar based on that feedback.

Key factors to consider would be a later school start date, getting out of school before Memorial Day, the length of the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, and finishing the first semester before the Christmas break.

“We can’t have our cake and eat it, too,” Murphy said.

You can’t always start school later, get a full week out at Thanksgiving, two full weeks out at Christmas, finish the first semester before Christmas break and get out before Memorial Day, she said.

School board Vice President Deanna Bamman said even if you don’t give students a full week out at Thanksgiving, some parents will keep them out of school anyway, and that leaves some teachers with half their classes gone.

Murphy said the good thing is that there is no need to rush to make a decision because the calendar being debated is for the 2021-22 school year. The 2020-21 calendar is already set. Parents like having advance notice of the calendar, but there still is plenty of time to gather more feedback before making a decision, she said.

She knows that no matter what decision is made, not everyone will be happy, but school officials want to align decisions to meet stated priorities, she said.

Simmons said she plans to do another survey after Thanksgiving.

In other business Tuesday night, the school board approved a fiscal 2020 budget that anticipates spending $205 million while receiving $189 million in revenues and $830,000 from other sources.

That would mean pulling $15 million from school system reserves, but the district expects to begin fiscal 2020 with at least $103.5 million in reserves, Chief Financial Officer Michele McCay said.

About $19 million of the 2020 expenditures are for capital projects. School board President Craig Kelley said the district has to provide enough classrooms for students, maintain existing buildings and plan for future capital projects. Read more about the 2020 budget here.

School officials also on Tuesday night:

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