‘Hyped about the Hybrid’

By RALPH HARDIN

ralphhardin@gmail.com

One of the biggest local news stories of 2020 — before the coronavirus came to town – was the Marion School District’s plan to move to an innovative school calendar. On Feb. 20, 2020, the Marion School Board voted unanimously to adopt the proposed “Hybrid Calendar” for the 20202021 school year. The board also cast a unanimous vote to table a proposed “Staggered Start Time” proposal for further study.

“While it became clear during our conversations that the Staggered Start Time proposal could have a positive impact on some of our most onerous transportation issues, it also became clear that it possibly could generate some problematic, unintended consequences for parents,” explained Marion Superintendent of Schools Dr. Glen Fenter. “Consequently, the decision was made to simply continue to search for a better plan that did not have the same potential for negatively impacting any parents.”

While not exactly a “yearround” school year and not the traditional “long-summer” school year, the new calendar will feature extended breaks throughout the school year and a shorter summer vacation.

After conducting several surveys with staff, students, parents and leaders in the community, Fenter made a final pitch over the proposal to crowd of stakeholders, parents and community members at the Marion Performing Arts Center ahead of the school board meeting.

Fenter presented both the hybrid school calendar and staggered start times plans to the audience of about 120.

The two proposals were presented as ways to potentially improve academic outcomes and college readiness based on standardized testing. Fenter said better schools would drive an improved quality of life in the city.

“The most important factor that Marion continues to evolve to is based on one single factor, the quality of the public schools,” said Fenter.

The Superintendent stressed the same number of school days for students under the hybrid academic calendar.

Fenter indicated that both research and common sense called for redistributing breaks throughout the year.

He said some summer vacation days would be shifted under the plan.

The proposed calendar added two weeks to fall break, offered the same Thanksgiving and winter breaks, and added a week of spring break.

The hybrid calendar took aim at reducing the “summer slide” with students forgetting some of what was taught in the previous grade. The calendar also offered a chance for students and teachers to stay fresher with more breaks across the year.

Poll results from faculty and staff, parents, and students showed most favored the calendar change.

“The Hybrid Calendar conversation really came down to one seminal issue,” said Fenter. “Does the model have the potential to significantly improve our teaching and learning processes? With a preponderance of our faculty expressing their support for the model and the positive changes that it can provide, the Board equated their support for the Hybrid model as an expression of their support for our classroom teachers and the great work that they do.”

Of course, by Spring Break, the point was moot. Schools across the state were shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to not add any more confusion and complication to the 2020-2021 school year as school officials worked to implement a pandemic- focused learning and teaching model, the district scrapped plans to institute the hybrid schedule.

Fast-forward to today, and the Marion School District will move forward with the modified school calendar for the 2021-2022 school year, following approval of the plan earlier this month by the School Board.

As was originally planned, by shifting to the hybrid calendar, the district will spread out the school year, trimming time from students’ summer vacation and adding two-week rejuvenation breaks after each nine weeks. Students will still have a seven-week break, but they will also get twoweek breaks in the fall, winter, and spring. The number of days of instruction will remain unchanged at 178.

According to research, students often lose up to 40 percent of what they have learned during the previous year during extended summer breaks. That number can be reduced as much as 22 percent when students are not exposed to a long summer vacation.

The breaks after each nine weeks provide students the opportunity to absorb what they have learned and to take time to rest and renew. For teachers, it’s a chance to evaluate their students’ greatest needs for the next nine weeks. With hybrid school calendars, discipline issues tend to decline, graduation rates rise, and greater academic growth is experienced.

“We could continue to use the same calendar we have always used, but in today’s society we have to be willing to think outside the norms to help our students of today be prepared for the world of tomorrow,” said Marion Superintendent Glen Fenter. “The calendar most schools use today was originally designed to have kids out in the summer to work on farms. That’s outdated.

“We aren’t going yearround, and students will still have a seven-week summer to enjoy,” he continued. “With this change, we will simply spread the year out, allowing our students and teachers to have intermittent breaks without actually adding any additional days to the calendar.”

Marion is currently the only district in east Arkansas to adopt a hybrid calendar, but similar calendars have been used with success at schools in Colorado, Georgia, Texas, Florida, California, and several others.

Under the hybrid calendar, the first day of school for Marion students will be Monday, July 26. Other key dates for students are as follows:

■ ■ Fall Break: September 27-October 10

■ ■ Thanksgiving Holiday: November 22-26

■ ■ Winter Break: December 20-January 3

■ ■ Spring Break: March 11-27 The district will also continue to observe holidays for Labor Day, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, Presidents Day, Good Friday, and Memorial Day.

Last year, when originally proposing the hybrid calendar to families and staff, the district conducted extensive surveys. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with a small but vocal minority raising concerns over child custody dates and conflicts with vacation and family schedules.

“Our students deserve quality schools; they deserve innovative schools,” Fenter said. “They deserve to have schools that will do whatever it takes to improve educational outcomes. That’s what we are committed to doing. It’s something we’ve tried to do from the creation of our magnet schools to the facility improvements we are making district-wide. If there’s something we can do to improve the education our students get, we want to do it.”

With a growing enrollment of nearly 3,900 students, the Marion School District is committed to helping students develop the academic, social, and decision-making skills needed to become productive citizens in the rapidly changing technological world. For enrollment information, including information on school choice, visit https://www.msd3.org/ or call 870-739-5100.

FENTER