The Polk County Board of Education decided that the plan presented for a four-day student week, and five-day teacher week will be going ahead for the coming school year. It wasn’t a unanimous decision, however.

They voted 6-1 to approve of moving forward with the calendar as presented with Board Member Chris Culver the lone vote against the measure. He said during the work session he wanted to go back to the five-day week that is traditional for the district to use.

COVID-19 prompted the shift early in the school year to the four-day week for students, giving educators a day to plan and an extra day for janitorial staff to sanitize the schools.

After going through testing to provide benchmarks on where students stood after August when returning to classrooms for the first time since March 2020, and then again before the holiday break, they found the four-day week was providing benefits.

To to take advantage of it, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Katie Thomas provided a plan to use the Mondays off for students to allow individuals who need the catch-up time outside of normal studies to work one-on-one with teachers, then spend the rest of the week in classroom time for their grade level requirements. Thomas also provided a number of positive comments from educators during last week’s presentation, and survey results from teachers and parents citing a majority wanted to keep the schedule.

Culver said last week he wanted to go back to the old calendar to ensure that students who need the classroom space as a safe environment and the time educators spend as mentors with youth is lessened by 20% on a weekly basis because of the change.

You can hear last week’s presentation in this episode of Talking Points on Polk.Today (in Part 2.)

Along with personnel decisions, the board voted to approve remaining the fiscal agent for Polk Family Connection, heard updated budget numbers from December 2020 – at the time more than $24 million was available in the general fund – and gave out the February 2021 MERIT Award.

Officer Bryce Momin from the Polk School District Police was given a gift card and a certificate to honor his winning the award. The District focuses on a different department monthly to honor with the MERIT Award.