FAYETTEVILLE — Fayetteville may get its third school on a continuous learning calendar for the 2014-15 school year, although one School Board member expressed concern about middle school capacity.
At A Glance
School Honors
Fayetteville's School Board recognized Michelle Hayward, McNair Middle School principal, and Mim Heinrichs, Fayetteville High School world language teacher, for national awards they recently received.
Hayward has been named a 2013 recipient of the Distinguished Educator Award from the Association for Middle Level Education. She will be honored at the association’s annual meeting in Minneapolis in November.
Heinrichs has received a 2013 Yale Educator Award, which honors outstanding educators from around the world who support and inspire their students to perform at high levels and achieve excellence. She was one of 52 teachers selected for the award.
Source: Staff Report
The proposal brought to the School Board on Thursday requests Owl Creek School, the district’s only kindergarten through seventh-grade school, transition to the longer school year next year. Parents who don’t like the different calendar will have an option to transfer their children to a school that operates on a traditional calendar.
A continuous learning calendar allows a school to open two weeks earlier and to end two weeks later than a school on the traditional calendar. The result is a shorter summer break but with more frequent and longer breaks during the school year. The students still spend 178 days in school, the required number of days by the state.
Jim Halsell, a board member, said he was concerned about the transfer option for students in Owl Creek’s middle school because if too many transferred out the other middle schools — Holt and McNair — might not have the capacity to accept those students.
Conversely, Owl Creek might not have the capacity to handle transfers from the other schools whose parents want their students in a school with the longer calendar.
If approved next month, Owl Creek would join Happy Hollow and Asbell elementary schools as the third school to adopt the longer calendar. Owl Creek’s middle school would be the only middle school on the longer calendar.
“We already have parents coming to Owl Creek for the continuous learning calendar,” said Principal Kristen Champion. “We’re not an agrarian society any more.”
After a yearlong study, key conclusions about the long school year included improved academic performance, lower rates of absenteeism and fewer disciplinary infractions occur. All students have more opportunities for enrichment with added academic benefits for at-risk students.
The board will act on the proposal at its October meeting.
Superintendent Vicki Thomas said the capacity issue may be moot by the 2015-16 school year when freshmen are moved to the high school and the lower schools are realigned. The proposal is to transition elementary schools to kindergarten through fourth grade; middle schools to fifth and sixth grades; and junior high schools to seventh and eighth grades.
The realignment is expected to create capacity in all of the schools for growth without building new schools.
John L Colbert, assistant superintendent, said an average of two transfers a year are requested from parents to leave Happy Hollow or Asbell.
“I don’t think it will hurt based on history,” Colbert said.
In other business, Jared Brown, a project director with Nabholz Construction Services, told board members construction of the new vocational agriculture and library spaces at Fayetteville High School will be finished next week.
The agriculture program is set to start classes in its new space Nov. 4, Thomas said.
The new library is expected to open sometime in the spring semester, she added. Furniture for the library — to be named the Matthew Moore Memorial Library — will be ordered soon.
The move will bring back together the library’s collection now housed in the basement of the old section of the high school and at the former Happy Hollow School, now the district’s professional development center. Thomas said moving the library will be coordinated with the two librarians and the classes they teach and the services they provide to students.