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The Franklin City School Board was given a look Thursday, Jan. 18, at the initial draft of the proposed academic calendar for Franklin City Public Schools’ 2024-25 school year, which transitioned half-day Fridays to whole days and also shortened the school day for elementary school students.

FCPS Director of Operations Dr. Clint Walters, who presented the proposed calendar, said that key factors considered in its formulation were as follows:

• compliance with standards of accreditation in terms of seat hours;
• feedback indicating the effectiveness of the four-day work week in recruiting and retaining quality staff; and 
• feedback indicating that the existing instructional day for the division’s youngest learners is too long.

As he began sharing details of the proposed calendar, he noted that FCPS would continue to have three days of new teacher orientation in August, and school would start after Labor Day.

The calendar maintains the week off at Thanksgiving and two weeks off for winter break. Spring break would be from April 14-18, and the last day of school would be June 13.

“One of the things that you may notice when you look at the calendar is we don’t have the half-day Fridays in our proposed calendar,” Walter said. “What we’re going to do is we’re going to reclaim that instructional time, and considering that, still being thoughtful about how we can provide teachers with professional development.”

But he noted that the proposed calendar does still offer Wellness Fridays.

“It also, therefore, offers the opportunity for Enrichment Fridays where we can continue to provide targeted assistance to our students who need that extra remediation or stretching for other enrichment opportunities,” he said.

He explained how concerns about the length of the instructional day at S.P. Morton Elementary School were addressed.

“When we change the half-day Fridays to whole days, and understanding that we already have a lot of banked time, we are able to shorten the school day by 40 minutes and still have a pretty significant bank of time when we compare the current school year to the upcoming proposed calendar for the school year,” he said.

This story will be developed further.