Our thanks to Michelle Curry and Terry Van Santer for making the drive from the north to facilitate our work this year. Michelle is a retired school superintendent who has facilitated the balanced calendar work of Highland and Wahluke School Districts in Washington State. She is a coach for several districts with the Washington State Leadership Academy. Terry is her long-time associate who scribes and assists with logistics.
A delegation of task force members attended the balanced calendar conference in Yakima on October 12 & 13. Sarita Loya, Pres. PSE, Alicia Booker, Pres. PSE Drivers, Tracie Cannon, Pres. TEA, Angela Bacon, Principal TES and Chris Rust attended. They shared the benefits and challenges of a balanced calendar with the team along with a variety of ways that different communities have structured their balanced calendars.
The delegation recommended that the task force engage in a book study of "Summer vs. School" by Jim Pedersen. Chris will order books sufficient for the task force and to place in the Toledo Library for community check out. The group agreed to have chapters 1 and 2 read prior to the next meeting on November 21.
Michelle shared 6 questions for the group to consider. One of those questions is "Who else and how should we include the community to help with this decision?" We still need to invite 3 students from THS (athlete plus two more) and one student from CPA as well as a daycare provider, liaison from the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church and a member of the City Council. I have calls in to all of these folks.
We had lots of conversation regarding what is possible, what is challenging and what we want to know more about. Michelle suggested getting guest speakers from other districts to share their experiences with us. This would likely be done via zoom.
The repository for our work is online at https://drive.google.com/
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