A month after Lowndes County School District adopted a modified calendar for the 2023-24 school year, Columbus Municipal School District has followed suit.

On Thursday morning during its virtual board meeting, the CMSD board of trustees unanimously approved the calendar, which will spread instruction days across more of the year and add longer breaks in fall and spring.

“I’m excited about (the modified calendar) and the possibilities that lie ahead with this calendar,” trustee Fredrick Sparks said. “It’s my prayer that the community continues to buy in and support the district as a whole as we continue to move forward together.”

With the approved modified calendar, the 2023-24 year will begin for students on July 27 and end May 30, which is exactly the same schedule as LCSD.

There will be two intersession periods — one before fall break and one before spring break — for remediation and enrichment for students who attend. There is only one week of intersessions each semester, and there is a full week of fall and spring break each. There is also a two-week Christmas break.

A modified calendar still consists of 180 days for students and 187 contract days for teachers. Intersessions are not part of a teachers’ contract days, so they will be paid extra if they choose to work them.

After meeting with teachers, students, administrators and community members and sending out surveys, Interim Superintendent Dennis Dupree presented the findings to the board including how many teachers showed interest in working intersessions, survey findings and tentative schedules for intersessions.

Of the 130 staff who participated in the survey, 97.7 percent favored the modified calendar. The survey was open to staff from Feb. 1 to Tuesday, and CMSD has approximately 556 employees, roughly 230 of which are teachers, CMSD Public Information Officer Mary Pollitz told The Dispatch.

The survey was open to the public from Feb. 3 to Tuesday, and roughly 65 percent favored the modified calendar. There were 138 responses, and 128 identified as CMSD parents. There are roughly 3,000 students currently enrolled in the district.

Administrators polled their teachers about intersession participation and reported it back to district officials. Out of the five elementary schools, 59 teachers showed interest, 25 showed interest from Columbus Middle School, and a combined 27 showed interest from Columbus High School and McKellar Technology Center.

Intersession days would be 60 percent days for students and teachers, and teachers will identify students in need of remediation based on Mississippi Academic Assessment Program scores, benchmark data and other data. Enrichment will include art, field trips, coding, ACT Prep, WorkKeys Prep and more.

Dupree said at one of the community meetings, a parent asked if students would need to be in uniform during intersessions, and the board decided to not require uniforms during intersession weeks to incentivize students to want to attend the additional schooling.

“I think it’ll be a motivating factor, too, for students to attend,” Dupree said. “It’s something different for them.”

In 2021, the board shot down a proposed modified calendar in a 3-2 vote with current members Yvonne Cox and Telisa Young voting against it.

The board was initially open to the idea, presented by then-superintendent Cherie Labat. But public outcry against the change, which focused largely on the shorter summer and child care options for working parents during the longer fall and spring breaks, halted the plan.

That proposal had school starting July 15, 2021 and ending June 8, 2022.

Cox, board president, said this time around there were conversations with teachers, students, community stakeholders and all of the administrators from the schools. Because other districts in the state, including Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District, have adopted modified calendars, board members and CMSD officials contacted them for information.

“I am appreciative to the presentation given to us a few years ago,” Cox said. “It was innovative in bringing the district in that direction. The only thing the board really wanted was to really build on that and for us to work together so we could actually do this. … Open up communication channels, see what your teachers think about it and not tell them, ‘This is what you’re going to do.’ Share with them, and let them have a part in the decision-making.”

Cox said the surveys, meetings and discussions, which showed a majority of teachers and parents in favor of the modified calendar, are exactly what she needed to see to vote for it.

Additional SROs
The board also unanimously added five school resource officer positions to the staff for the 2023-24 school year.

Assistant Superintendent Craig Chapman said the district now only has three — two at the high school and one at the middle school.

Board president Yvonne Cox would like to split the SROs among CHS, CMS and the district’s alternative school with school safety officers stationed at the elementary schools.

“The high school has so many moving parts to it and hallways, and there are so many different areas where discipline issues can happen,” Cox said. “Assistant principals can’t be there all the time, and Chief Brown may be dealing with other things, then there’s only one SRO there doing all of these things. … When the budget hearing takes place (in the summer), it might be good to look at adding more (than the five approved Thursday) if the budget allows it.”

SROs must have at least three years of law enforcement experience to be qualified.

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