Colby school board examines extended spring vacation

By Nathaniel Underwood

The Colby school board discussed the possible addition of an extended spring break to the 2024-25 district calendar, as well as several handbook and policy adaptations and facilities projects at their latest monthly meeting held on Monday. The board did not come to a decision on whether the extended spring break would be added at this time, tabling it for next month with the hope of gathering more data before making any changes.

As part of a recent community poll, the question of whether or not community members would like to see a full week of vacation during the springtime for the district was presented. The results of that poll, as well as information gathered by administration on the opinions of students and staff, suggested that some sort of extended break during this time was preferred, according to superintendent Patrick Galligan.

“Based upon community input and student and teacher input, there was a high recommendation that we work in some sort of spring break,” he said. “There was a very big consensus across the board on those questions. On some of the other calendar questions about the daily schedule there was far less consensus, so I figured this was an easy win for us to move in this direction.”

Two options of the calendar were presented to the board, one with an extended weekend in February and a four day weekend around the Easter holiday in April and the other would have a full week off in the spring without the extra days off in February. The poll of community members found that around 25 percent preferred the two extended weekends, 25 percent preferred the week vacation and 30 percent were fine with either.

There were pluses and minuses to the full week of spring vacation versus the two extended weekends that were discussed amongst the board and those present. Some thought that having two smaller vacations would help break up the long winter and early spring months and lead to less fatigue while others thought that having a full week off would help families plan spring vacations more easily.

There did not seem to be a consensus over which would be better for keeping students focused on school work, as different age groups would probably be affected differently. It was noted by educators present that a week off would probably work for high school students, but that it would be a little more difficult to get younger students back into school work after such a long break.

The board wanted to see if there was any data on how many students were taken out of school in the district for family vacations during the springtime and to talk with additional community members to see if a full week or two weekends would work better for the district and decided to table the decision

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for next month’s meeting.

Other Business

n The board changed the final day of school for students for the 2023-24 school year to May 23 instead of May 24, as two half days in a row at the end of the year was deemed unnecesary.

n The board approved the first reading of an updated policy regarding cellphone usage by students in school. The previous wording of the policy stated that students could bring cellphones to school, but they had to be powered off and kept stored in their lockers during the school day. The updated policy cut the verbiage stating that students keep their devices turned off and not on their person, with Galligan and staff present noting that these guidelines were not how the district had been handling such devices for some time and that an update to the policy was necessary. Students are allowed to have their devices on them during school hours, but cannot have them out during class unless allowed by the teacher.

n The board approved a project to remove the flooring in the elementary school, as moisture buildup has been an issue. Given that the source of the moisture has not been discovered, the best solution was to keep just the concrete and polish it down, as any additional flooring on top of it would only continue to result in a buildup of moisture.

Projects to update the signs for all three schools as well as to add stalls in the boys and girls pool locker room showers were also approved at Monday’s meeting.