Granton requests waiver to start 2021-22 year in August
After getting a taste of what it would be like to start school before Sept. 1, the Granton School Board has decided to try to get an early start date for school this coming fall. If a waiver request by the Board is approved by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), Granton students can expect to start the 2021-22 school year on Aug. 23.
During their past two meetings, the Granton Board had a great deal of discussion on its school calendar for the next school year, and whether or not it could start school in some capacity before the mandatory Sept. 1 start date. In the past few years, the school has toyed with the idea, first holding a three-day summer school session the week before the official start of school back in 2019, and again this past year when all schools were granted a waiver to start the year early because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The proposed 2021-22 school calendar was first revealed back at the board’s meeting on Feb. 8, but was not approved at the meeting due to disagreement about the school’s start date. On the calendar, the official first day of school was listed as Sept. 1, but several interim days in August were also listed on the calendar. These days, according to District Administrator James Kuchta, were to act as a kind of summer school days, where students would be encouraged to attend classes and the school buses would operate on their routes.
“The interim days are summer school,” he said. “They would not be mandatory, but we would run the buses and have it just like a regular school day.”
It was the nature of these interim days that brought contention within the Board and led to the discussion being tabled until its meeting on March 8. When the Board resumed talks, some members of the Board expressed concern about what lessons could actually be taught on the interim days without absent students falling behind, and if those days could be counted on the calendar without cheating students out of six days during the first quarter of the year.
“Quarter one has 46.5 days, and technically if you count by the first day of school (Sept. 1) it would only have 40.5 days,” said Board member Cheryl Steinbach. “When talking about the quarter, the first nine weeks have only 40 days because of the interim days … you take off six days. That’s significantly less than the other quarters.”
In the end, the Board decided on a 3-2 vote to pass a resolution to request a waiver of the commencement of the school year. If the waiver is approved in the next few months, the 2021-22 school calendar will stand as it is, with the interim school days officially being changed to regular school days and a start date of Aug. 23.
In other action taken by the Board, a WIAA co-op agreement with Black River Falls was approved for both boys and girls hockey for the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years.
