Good Morning:
As you know, we are dismissing 2 hours early every Friday to allow our staff time to accommodate for educating students who are on quarantine due to COVID-19. The early dismissal schedule does present us with a potential problem if we ever need to run a 2-hour delay, due to weather, on a Friday.
The concern we have is related to the time kids would be in school on Friday if we ran a 2 hour late start and had a 2-hour early dismissal. Kids would spend less than 2.5 hours of academic time on Friday in that scenario. We don’t believe this is a sound academic decision. For that reason, we are going to adjust the schedule on Friday if we ever need to run a 2-hour delay.
If we have a 2-hour delay on Friday, we will cancel the 2-hour early release that day. Students will go to school 2 hours late but will stay in school until the regular dismissal time they have on Monday through Thursday. Making this adjustment will provide students with the same amount of academic time that they would have if we did not have a 2-hour late start.
The adjustment to our schedule will only occur if we need to run a 2-hour delay on Friday. If we never have a 2-hour delay on a Friday, we won’t have to adjust the schedule. If we do have a 2-hour delay on a Friday, we will make sure we remind staff and families that there will be no 2-hour early release that day. We know that this adjustment may necessitate some changes to family schedules, so we wanted to make sure we communicated this with everyone before it happened. If you have any questions about this potential change, please let us know.
Thanks, and take care.
Rick Colpitts, Superintendent
Western Dubuque Community School District