After some public concern regarding the Powell School District’s calendar extending into June for the 2024-2025 school year, district administration responded. Now, an alternative calendar ending on May 30 will be brought to the PCSD1 school board for approval.

“There's been quite a bit of blowback on that and I will honestly say, almost nobody has talked to me directly,” Superintendent Jay Curtis said during Tuesday’s board meeting. “… And I just want to express that I heard enough that I thought, ‘You know what, I'm just going to take a look back at this.’”

Curtis worked with teachers and district administration to put together a new calendar they believe to be viable, he told the board.

The reason that the school calendar extended into June is because every seven years it needs to “roll,” Curtis said. That means, he said, that because every year the start date moves back, eventually the calendar needs to be reset by moving the last day of school forward one week for a year.

“There’s a long enough time period between the roll that everybody forgets that you roll until you do and then they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, what just happened,’” Curtis said.

Curtis was able to shorten the calendar by manipulating several dates including Christmas break. Rather than have more than two weeks of Christmas breaks teachers will return on Jan. 2-3 instead of Jan. 6-7. Students will return on Jan. 6 instead of Jan. 8 meaning they will have two weeks of Christmas break. One snow day was also removed from the calendar — this year PCSD1 had two snow days which would be converted into three-day weekends if not used.

This prevents the year from being extended at the end of the year if a snow day has to be taken. State statute requires that the school year consist of no fewer than 175 days.

“Students' last day will be on the 30th of May, which I think will make a lot of people happy. I think it's more of a mental thing than anything, people going into June,” Curtis said. “Because it's the same number of school days, no matter when you end and you're starting a week late. So I don't know why it's such a mental thing for a lot of people, but it is.”

Spring break has also shifted on the new calendar in order to align with Northwest College’s schedule, breaking a five year streak of being after state basketball. Over 100 PCSD1 students take classes at NWC, and Curtis said if they did not align their spring break with the college’s that over 100 students would not get spring break. The benefit of spring break coinciding with state basketball is that staff and students will not be missing school to watch or participate if Powell teams make it to state. He did note that an argument could be had that Powell’s basketball teams are not getting spring break.

“They're choosing to be in basketball … most of those kids if they’re not in basketball they’re going to be practicing track.”

Tracy Morris added that when her child played soccer they traveled for state and had graduation the following day.

“No, I agree, kids are in sports. I know we had soccer and we’d go to state and graduation was the next day. You accommodate,” Morris said.

Following discussion with the board the calendar will be approved at a future meeting.

There is no perfect calendar, Curtis told the board, but he thinks this is as close as it can get.

“I do think that ours comes as close to perfect as we possibly can get because when we walk through every item, every day off we actually have purpose behind when it is, why it is,” he said. “Our student achievement I think is a testament to our calendar as well. I mean, it all makes a difference.”