Sikeston R-6 amends 2023-2024 calendar

The 2023-2024 school year for Sikeston School District will include a week-long Thanksgiving break for students and a mid-May dismissal.

The Sikeston R-6 Board of Education approved an amended calendar for next school year during its regular monthly meeting Tuesday at Central Office.

“If you recall, you had approved (in the spring) a two-year calendar (2022-2023 and 2023-2024), and this summer I made the recommendation to get rid of early release Wednesdays and that is not reflected in next year’s calendar,” Sikeston R-6 Superintendent Shannon Holifield told the Board.

Jaclyn Scott, calendar committee chairperson and resource teacher at Wing Elementary, highlighted the changes to next school year’s calendar.

“The committee met a couple weeks ago to make similar amendments to what we did to fix this calendar year,” Scott said. “Getting rid of the early-release Wednesdays gave us some instructional minutes back.”

In August, the committee moved some in-service days, she said.

“The in-service days had been Aug. 16-18, 2023, and we moved them to Aug. 15-17, 2023,” Scott said. “That gave us a Friday off after in-service and an extra long weekend before school started. That came about from positive comments made by staff on this calendar.”

The amended calendar for the 2023-2024 school calendar will have Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023, as the first day of school.

There were no changes to September and October.

“In November, we have a big change there. The students will now be out of school for a whole week at Thanksgiving,” Scott said. “In order to do that, there was an in-service on the Monday after Thanksgiving, and we moved that to the Monday (Nov. 20, 2023) before Thanksgiving. So the teachers will be here on Monday and then there’s an extra day off Tuesday and then the rest of the week. A lot of schools have a fall break, and we don’t get that so it makes up at Thanksgiving.”

Students will have the entire Thanksgiving week off, Nov. 20-24, 2023.

“In December, we backed up our Christmas break,” Scott said. “It’s now a half day on the 21st versus a half day on the 22nd.”

Christmas break begins with a half day for students on Thursday, Dec. 21, 2023, with school resuming Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024.

There were no changes made to January, February and March.

“The Easter and spring break that is in April — this tacks on to that break in March so you have to look at both months — but we added April 2. So it gave five school days off,” Scott said.

Spring break will be March 27-April 2, 2024.

“The last day of school in May changed to a half day on the 16th versus a full day on 22nd,” Scott said.

The last day of school for students for the 2023-2024 school year is scheduled for half day on Thursday, May 16, 2024.

Scott noted the calendar does still have 36 hours of snow days built in which is approximately five days and the option of 36 hours of alternative methods of instruction, or AMI.