A major problem was addressed at the School Board committee meeting Tuesday evening, June 4. The School Board approved amendments to the 2019-2020 school calendar at its April 18 meeting (the original calendar was approved in March).
The problem is that, with the new amended calendar, schools will be out during the week of Natchitoches Central High School’s homecoming. Principal Bill Gordy said as soon as his staff received the original calendar they scheduled everything for the 2019-2020 school year. When the amended calendar was released, they realized that their homecoming game fell on Oct. 25. However school is out that week and students would miss out on homecoming activities which would normally be scheduled for Oct. 23-25.
Superintendent Dale Skinner said this oversight in the amendment of the calendar was an honest mistake.
No Board member moved to put this item on the agenda for further discussion and a vote at Thursday’s regular meeting. It seemed to be the consensus that voting to approve yet another calendar would make the Board seem foolish. They instead questioned why the date for homecoming couldn’t be moved to the end of September or the beginning of November, since there were conflicts with the other weekends in October.
Gordy said moving the date was feasible, but several other events would have to be moved as well, not counting for the number of other smaller issues that would arise because of the shifting of events (class reunions, planned time off, etc…).
The Board seemed against changing the calendar for a third time for a single school. In the end they chose to not do anything about the conflict and let the high school rearrange events on their own. The Board agreed that the NCHS football coach now has four-and-a-half months to figure it out.
“It’s a done deal,” said Skinner. “The board has spoken. I hate it for the alumni if they can’t make it on another weekend but it’s about what’s best for the kids.”
this will soon turn out to be “our” version of Footloose.
Kids will revolt cause they can’t dance and then they will
throw their own dance and there will be chicken fights on
tractors..Please don’t let this happen in our town !!
Hey, that was some awesome music in that movie. (Sigh) I miss those days of Miami Vice and big hair.
I certainly don’t .It was just the white man trying to keep us
down by mind control.
Sounds like s pretty inept board that can’t even get a schedule right.
You think? No wonder the system is so broken! Sad when the Superintendent can’t even get the calendar right! Now, that David Elkins has retired, the primates are running the zoo! Skinner and Gordy is a joke!
“A major problem”? Folks, if this is what the board thinks is a major problem, no wonder our kids are A) Performing at a mediocre level at best on standardized tests and their coursework, B) Bullying each other at alarming rates while teachers and administrators seem powerless to do anything C) Look forward to being suspended so they can enjoy days off watching Cartoon Network, playing Grand Theft Auto, or sexting each other.
Try Saturday detention 7:30 to 3:00 spent scraping gum off sidewalks, picking up their own litter, and any other much-needed clean-up work on campus. Make ’em get up early and take away their Saturdays. Hit ’em where it hurts, say I.
what in the wild…wild …..west does that have to do with a dance ?
My point was that the scheduling SNAFU is not “A major problem” and that, if the board thinks it is, then they’re blind to what the real major problems are. Mediocre (at best) student performance, bullying, and ineffective discipline.
They didn’t want to vote on another revision to the calendar to avoid looking “foolish”? I hate to be the bearer of bad news….but those “Boneheads” took the term foolish to an entirely new level a long time ago!
A public official is going to look foolish in one way or another at some point. But being unwilling to admit when you’ve made a mistake is childish. For pete’s sake, are these shenanigans typical of all school boards?
Sounds like another one of Mr Skinner’s Chinese fire drills
Oh….Oh !