The Kutztown School Board unanimously approved the 2022-23 school calendar with a change to be more flexible regarding snow days in light of recent icy conditions closing the schools.
“When we presented the calendar at the previous meeting on the bottom we had similar to this year that the first four inclement weather days would be snow days and then after that we would use virtual days,” said Superintendent Christian Temchatin during the Feb. 7 school board meeting. “Since then, I had asked the board if we could just make the amendment to leave that flexible.”
“The decision is very challenging no matter what but there are days where it certainly seems like a virtual day would be more appropriate than others,” he continued.
The revised calendar would allow school administration to use a flexible instructional day, or virtual school day, when deemed appropriate for students to be online doing schoolwork when students cannot be out enjoying a snow day due to inclement weather.
Citing an example, Temchatin said that the previous Friday, Feb. 4, was wet, with the anticipation of it getting icy and school was closed for the day. He did not believe there were many students out enjoying the snow day, nor many secondary students out helping their community and earning a few dollars by plowing, salting and shoveling.
“All those value of a traditional snow day is challenging on that day so my initial request was to stick with the four then virtual but going with a little bit of flexibility and using the applied four, five flexible instructional days from the state, kind of hoping to mix and match as appropriate,” he said.
The start date is Aug. 23. Without any snow days used, the last day would be May 25. If there are four snow days, and flexible instructional days beyond those four days are used, then the final day would be June 1.
In other business, the school board approved the second reading and adoption of Policy 916 – Volunteers and Policy 236.1 – Threat Assessment, updated job descriptions, the agreement with the Borough of Kutztown to purchase rock salt during the 2022 winter season, the agreement with Berks County Intermediate Unit for the IDEA-B 611 Grant for the 2021-2022 school year, the agreement with BCIU for the ARP Supplemental IDEA-B 611 Funding for the 2021-2022 school year, and the authorization of the expenditures of the BCIU Mandated Services Budget for the 2022-2023 school year, at a district cost of $26,707.56, which reflects a zero increase from the previous year.
Also, the school board approved the acceptance, with gratitude, donations from Christmas City Studio, LLC to Kutztown Elementary School in the amount of $811.70 and from Rob Howard to the Kutztown High School Baseball program in the amount of $2,760.
There were no public comments during the meeting.
The upcoming meetings include Feb. 14 Policy/Curriculum Committee Meeting at 6 p.m. and Facilities/Extra Curricular Committee Meeting at 7 p.m. The school board’s monthly meeting is Feb. 22 at 7:30 p.m. and the Workshop School Board Meeting is March 7 at 7:30 p.m. Meetings will be held in the middle school and via Zoom.
Source: Berkshire mont
Be First to Comment