During the Winslow Unified School District Governing Board meeting last week, the calendar for the following two school years was finalized.
In early 2018, a debate began regarding the scheduling of spring and fall breaks for students and staff of Winslow Schools. According to Superintendent Cyndie Mattox, the opinions were always close in numbers. Whether to shorten the fall break to one week became a major topic of discussion in March last year when the board held public meetings to garner opinions from community members.
In last week’s meeting, action was taken to adopt the new calendar. Mattox said, “The survey we administered was always close. It ended up being one week for fall break and one week for spring break. Importantly, our spring break lines up with NAVIT (Northern Arizona Vocational Institute of Technology) so our kids can have the same time off. The new schedule will mean that school will start one week later in the first week of August.
Previously, the fall break was two weeks and the spring break only one. Details on exactly when those breaks will fall will be available before the end of the school year this year. The adopted calendar will pertain to the 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 school years.
The board also approved the 2017-2018 annual financial report by Business Manager Shirley Lomeli. WUSD remained in good standing with their budget for the year, retaining seven percent of their expenditures. An imbalance of $28,000 was accrued in food service, in which a contracted provider went over budget. The issue was addressed and the district has begun the bidding process for a new provider for the new school year. The entire report is available on the district website at www.wusd1.org.
In other business the governing board:
* Approved the hiring of Jason Begay, bus driver; Alyssa Burt, high needs aide; Michael Duran, science teacher; Dallas Jones, emergency substitute teacher; Chad Sullivan, emergency substitute teacher; and Rosanne Sundwall, crossing guard.
* Approved an extra duty stipend for Sarah Shumway and Ginger Fischer for music performances; and Gina Williams and Lizzette Quintana for athletic direction at Winslow Junior High School.
* Approved a donation of $83.31 to Washington Elementary School from Sonic Night.
* Approved out of state travel for one employee on Oct. 12-14 to Las Vegas, Nev., to attend workshops on math and literacy funded by a grant.
* Approved out of state travel for two employees to Las Vegas on Oct. 13-18 to attend an Adobe workshop funded by a grant.
* Approved out of state travel for two employees, two adult chaperones and 12 students to Los Angeles, Calif., for a leadership conference, funded by club money raised by students.
The next meeting of the Winslow Unified School District Governing Board will be held at 6 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 18, in the district offices, located at 800 Apache Ave. in Winslow.
