R-6 Board OKs calendars for next two school years

SIKESTON — A later starting date per the new Missouri law as well as a weekly early dismissal for teacher collaboration are among the changes in the Sikeston R-6 School District’s calendar for the next two school years.

Sikeston R-6 Board of Education members approved the recommended calendars for both the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years Tuesday during their regular monthly meeting.

Jaclyn Scott, calendar committee chairperson, presented information to the Board.

“Each year we have a group of staff members volunteer to serve on this committee,” Scott said. “There’s a lot of number crunching, pencil pushing and Tetris playing to get all of our information in to come up with a calendar that is academically sound and meets the needs of our students and community so, thank you, for letting us have that input.”

This year the committee members had some changes to their process and the perimeters that come down to them as a committee to establish the calendar, Scott said.

“The first one being at the request of (Superintendent) Dr. (Tony) Robinson, the committee created two calendars this year. So tonight I will present a calendar for 2020-2021 and also for 2021-2022 to help with future planning,” Scott said.

The second change had to do with the first day of school, Scott said. The new law for Missouri states that students can be in school no sooner than 14 days prior to Labor Day, so this shifted Sikeston’s start dates, she said. For 2020-2021, students could not attend before Aug. 24 and for 2021-2022, that date is Aug. 23.

“That’s a big change from what we have seen in the past few years,” she said.

The third change the calendar committee went through came down as part of the district’s Missouri Model District initiative, Scott said. The district will implement a 90-minute weekly collaboration time next year on Wednesday afternoons.

“This time will be used for data analysis, teacher collaboration to plan instruction that is based on what we find from that data,” Scott said. “We have a hard time now finding a common time for every teacher in a grade level, especially districtwide, such as department teams, to all get together at the same time.

She continued: “I feel like we did a good job reaching out to the community to pull in some resources from the YMCA and church to help with a little bit of a burden we might be putting on people with getting out of school early, but I feel like the collaboration time will be important.

With those three changes in place, Scott said the committee met in October to establish calendars options.

“We still met the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s requirement of 1,044 student hours, and we have an additional 36 hours with every calendar option, which allows us to have six built-in snow days, so we won’t have to make anything up unless we use more than six.”

With the new start date, the committee members were concerned with getting in the breaks the district typically has, but they were able to do it, she said. The calendar options were put to a vote by staff members in November, and Scott presented the winning calendar options to the Board.

For the 2020-2021 school year, the first day of school for students is Aug. 25 and the last day of school will be with an early dismissal May 28. Thanksgiving break will be Nov. 25-27, and Christmas break will be Dec. 21-Jan 4. Spring break will be March 29-April 5.

For the 2021-2022 school year, the first day of school for students is Aug. 23 and the last day will be with an early dismissal May 27. Thanksgiving break will be Nov. 24-26, and Christmas break will be Dec. 20-Jan 3. Spring break is scheduled for March 21-25 and an Easter break April 15-18.

“The committee did some great work in looking at all the detail required to make sure we’re addressing everything we need to as well as providing extra, needed collaborative time for our staff,” Robinson said.

Also on Tuesday, during the information portion of the meeting, Board President Matt Tanner brought up the issue of safety and asked board members if they want to discuss the possibility of the district adding metal detectors to be used at big events held in the district, such as graduation, ballgames, regional tournaments and other community events.

“Dr. Robinson and I have a meeting once a month to go over the agenda and other issues that come up,” Tanner said. “One or two of us have talked about it in passing and in light of different things. I know there are other surrounding towns that have them. Are metal detectors something we need to look at for large gatherings, such as graduations, basketball games, football games?”

Tanner said this is just an idea at this point. He noted sometimes there’s a bad connotation with the use of metal detectors, but he also knows other school districts, such as New Madrid County R-1, use them. Tanner said he’s thinking the metal detectors would not be necessary for daily school use.

“I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” noted Board Vice President Rebecca Steward.

Steward said she recently attended a Christian event in St. Charles, and there were metal detectors there.

“There is no crowd that eliminates the possibility of there being a weapon,” Steward said.

Tanner pointed out attendees of St. Louis Cardinals baseball games must always walk through metal detectors.

After some discussion, board members agreed they could further the discussion on the issue.

Robinson said since his tenure began, he has met with District Safety Coordinator Scott Ezell and Sikeston DPS Chief James McMillen to address a number of pieces of the district’s safety plan as well as additional concerns. He concluded he will get additional information on the topic by reaching out to other school districts that use metal detectors and gather costs for the devices, too.

In other news Tuesday, districtwide enrollment is holding steady at 3,452, which is down two students from December.