Molly Risley, Charger Staff
With one semester behind and one semester left to go, students and teachers
are already making plans for next year. The 2002-2003 school year, however,
will be quite different from the 2001-2002 calendar.
On January 10, 2002, the Putnam County School Board voted 6-0 in favor of a
new calendar. Next year Putnam County schools will operate on a balanced calendar,
otherwise known as the 9-2 calendar.
Once this new calendar is in place, all of the schools will have nine weeks
of instruction and two weeks of vacation, followed by nine more weeks of instruction
and two of vacation, and so on throughout the year.
Although students and teachers will have to start back to school a week earlier
and finish the year a week later, they will receive two-week breaks in the fall,
spring, and at Christmastime. In cases of emergency, such as this year’s
Anthrax threat, schools will follow the same procedure and make up missed days
on Saturdays.
This new calendar has been discussed for the last four years, but its success
at Capshaw Elementary, and, most recently, Dry Valley, prompted the school board
to put it into effect a slightly modified version for all Putnam County schools.
There are other factors that contributed to the new calendar’s acceptance.
“Most importantly,” says Dr. Michael Martin, “the new calendar
maximizes the number of instruction days before the Gateway test both in the
fall and the spring.”
As the balanced calendar has only been in Tennessee for four or five years,
there may be times when sports teams, clubs, or other groups may be scheduled
to play, practice, or meet during one of the two-week breaks.
“As we saw with the late return to school this year, sports teams at the
high school level go on,” says Dr. Martin.
Hopefully, as the balanced calendar becomes more popular across the state, other
schools will schedule their games and competitions around the two-week breaks.
“This calendar is better instructionally and mentally because it provides needed breaks for students and staff, “ says Dr. Martin. “It will be a cultural change for our community.”
Home page | Archives | More February 2002 Articles