Peetz school board rejects 4-day week for 2016-17 school year

The Peetz Plateau School District will remain on its current five-day week schedule through at least the 2016-2017 school year after board members rejected moving the district to a four-day week.

The decision was made during the school board's regular meeting held on March 15.

Peetz Superintendent Mark Collard said discussion to move the district to a four-day week began in December last year.

"We did research on it and held some open forums," Collard said. "Some hard copy survey materials and things like that to see where the parents and the community were at."

Collard the main impetus for the proposed change was because of budgetary concerns within the school district.

"A way to save money in the budget," he said.

Collard said with the schedule change, however, there was not a "huge savings" in the district's budget.

"There was some savings, but not a huge savings," he said. "You'd think, logically, there would be 20 percent of the budget, but that's not the case. We could have saved a little bit of money, but not a whole bunch."

Had the four-day schedule passed, the school day would have been extended by 13 minutes and extra days added to the end of the year to compensate for the loss of days.

"What we did is took the number of hours on our five-day calendar and tried to work that in as four days to make it comparable," Collard said. "So days needed to be added to make the math work out."

Ultimately, the school board chose not to move to a four-day day, and the upcoming 2016-17 school year will remain at five days a week. Collard said he thinks the decision was made because the board still as questions and needs more information on specifics regarding the proposed change.

"Such as far as what instruction would look like during the day," he said. "Just different things that I think they want more time to mull over and maybe talk about with staff."

Even though the decision was made to remain at five days, Collard said the board was open to keeping the conversation alive.

"And over the course of the next few months, and even the next school year, it will be something that's going to come up again," he said. "So it's not completely knocked out of the park. It's just something that, I think, the board just needs more time to digest, and more information needs to be provided to them, so they can feel good about, and they're sure of, what they're voting on."

In an email statement, Board President Brad Segelke stated that because of the complexity of the change, "more planning and research needs to be completed to build on what already has been done so that, if and when a four-day school week is implemented, we can ensure its success."

Segelke also stated via email that the staff, students and community should be proud of making Peetz School rank fifth in Colorado.

"And we want to continue this success by allowing the proper time and planning to make important decisions and changes," he stated.

Collard said within the community, he thinks there has been "a fair number of parents and staff" disappointed by the decision.

"But now that the decision is made, I think everybody is willing to come together," he said. "I mean, in the long run, four day or five day, it's not a huge deal either way."