BRENHAM SCHOOL BOARD APPROVES 23-24 CALENDAR
The 23-24 School Calendar was approved by the Brenham School Board at their meeting last night, but not before each member discussed it. The biggest change between the current year's calendar and the new one is that students will have three days off for Fair week, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, instead of just Wednesday. It also shifts the Christmas and New Year’s break to December 22nd through January 8th. President of the School Board, Natalie Lange, said she voted against the calendar as a parent on the internet, but would now vote for it because it received the most votes. 58 percent of the people, or 651 chose the calendar over option 2 in a survey of families. The second choice would have dismissed students for the winter break on December 15th and resumed classes on January 3rd. Trustee Kelvin Raven said he felt bad for those parents who would have to pay for Day Care for their kids on the extra holidays. Board Secretary Susan Jenkins said she felt bad for parents who would have to take vacation days to stay home with their kids. She suggested the School District work with local churches to set up temporary day cares for those holidays. The 23 -24 calendar was passed by the board, with only Kelvin Raven dissenting.
Three people from the public spoke before the meeting. They were Pastor Billy Sutherland who spoke for the group Texas Church Leaders. Steve Suders spoke next for no group in particular. He advocated that public education should teach what is morally good, and not divide students. Susanna Leonard spoke last as a concerned parent about the proposed 23-24 school calendar.
The board also approved the Consent Agenda, which contained the Campus Improvement Plan with the ability to update as needed. Those items were discussed at the School Board meeting last Monday. After a closed executive session were the board evaluated Superintendent Dr. Tylor Chaplin, the board took no action. Dr. Chaplin said after the executive session that "he is looking forward to continuing to provide opportunities for our students."
We would like to take this opportunity to address some calendar concerns brought to us during the calendar development process. The Champion Drive event typically takes place on Thursday of Fair Week. Brenham ISD is 100% committed to continuing to support this amazing experience for our students. We have discussed multiple ways to ensure these students continue to get this opportunity. Additionally, the Washington County Fair has been shifted to one week later in September 2023 from the prior year. Our football schedule is set contractually on a 2-year rotation. 2023 will be the second year of that contract which commits us to play a football game that week. In coordination with fair officials, it was determined it would be best to play that week's football game on Thursday to try to avoid any conflicts our students may have with the fair events. That game will be a home game against New Braunfels. If you recall, we traveled to New Braunfels this past September and played them on a Thursday evening.
Love the kids in this School District. The adults do not care too much for outsiders. You are thrown in the pool and expected to swim like you were in the Olympics.
It does matter to the tax payers because we have children attending the schools that I pay taxes for. Not all patents have Parent Square or emails accounts. What the heck happened to the old fashion notes sent home with the student? If you sent out all the high dollar brochures to voters asking them to vote yes on $138 million bond issue why wouldn’t you send out something to all the parents and guardians of all the registered students asking them to vote on changing up the school calendar? I completely agree with the persons that made reference to divorced parents. Changing up the calendar makes it to where there is less time spent with one of the parents now.
Now to respond to HH, having a few make decisions for many is never a good thing. Mainly because the few do not know or understand the trials and tribulations of the many. 3 days off at fair time can cause so much havoc for a single parent. Trying to find sitters if they can’t take off work. Not everyone that is employed has paid vacation. If they don’t work, they don’t get paid. I just really think there should have been more thought ho into this and there should have been more of a conscious effort to get more input and opinions of the parents.
It’s the same number of days off as it has been in previous years! Everybody is complaining about the three days off at fair, but if it wasn’t those three days it would be three days somewhere else, and parents would STILL have to arrange for child care. It’s no different than any other year, they just rearranged the days because they have a history of poor attendance during those days, and this would remedy it.
The old fashioned way is that the School Board quietly makes a decision on its own with little or no solicitation of public input and neither the public or the staff perceives that it ever really had a choice, so nobody gets worked up about anything.
Seeing all the vitriol and hand-wringing on here over a good-hearted effort to engage the community, all I can say is that there’s a reason we aren’t usually afforded a choice. It’s because we don’t deserve one. We make the perfect into the enemy of the good.
This makes it difficult for most parents who share custody. The AG bases the divorce decree on the traditional Christmas break. So now depending on who’s year it is the other parent gets less days with their children for 2023. How does that seem fair?
The ratio of teachers/staff was greater than parents for the vote. There were several issues with this voting process and it needs to be reconducted to exclude teachers/staff. Several parents are not even registered for Parent Square and didn’t know about the vote. You were allowed to vote as many times as you wanted. A lot of misinformation and presented in a way to choose their so called “Option 1.” The break this year was 12/16-1/4 why for next year would it no be 12/15-1/3? Katy ISD and the majority of Texas schools have the traditional Christmas Break, 12/15-1/3. This also greatly affects children and parents in shared custody households who were expecting the traditional Christmas Break, which the visitation schedule from the Attorney General is based off of.
You’re wanting to exclude teachers/staff, but did you ever stop to think that maybe some of those teachers voted for option 2??? Because if you were to get your revote sans teachers you would lose those votes, and probably still lose. You are jumping to conclusions and blaming the teachers when I’m sure there were a lot of parents (non teachers) who voted for option 1 and had their reasons.
Some of those teachers are also parents, and some of those are parents who have kids who participate at the fair. Those parents who are teachers may or may not have had substitutes when they took off for their kid at the fair. Newsflash: very few people want to sub in this district, too. We’re not Katy, Cy-Fair, or Armpit ISD, at least not yet. If we were, we’d have a new junior high.
The amount of days are the same. The majority of the people voting chose option one. Why are there so many complaints? Either way the school district is NOT responsible for YOUR children. The public school system provides an education. PARENTS provide the rest: food, shelter, medicine and WAIT FOR IT….CHILDCARE!!!!!! This speaks volumes about our society. They are expecting the government (in this case the school district to care for their kids). Get busy, you have almost a year to get your childcare lined up.
Amen!!!! Teachers are not baby-sitters!
And for those that are complaining about custody and voting: As a teacher that is also a divorced parent, try talking to your ex and adjusting your Christmas break custody schedule. The Attorney General custody schedule is NOT mandatory. It is there in case the 2 parties cannot come to an agreement.
As far as the voting goes, allowing the public to vote on the school calendar is something that is new to Brenham ISD. In the past, district-level employees developed the calendar and it was passed by the board without any input from the community. Therefore, you should be glad that anyone was asked for their input.
If parents of students are mad that they didn’t know about the vote because they don’t have ParentSquare, it is not difficult to get. Download the app or go to the website. The district has already made an account for every parent. The parent only needs to log in to activate it and turn on notifications.
Who voted on this? Where did the tax payers vote on this? A website? Was something mailed out to us? I never received anything that asked me, a tax payer, to vote on a calendar. Nor did I receive anything type of notification asking me to get on a website to vote on a calendar. So who voted and made a decision for everyone?
It was sent out through Parent Square about a week ago for all current BISD parents to vote on. We typically do not get to vote on the calendar but with the big changes this year, they did give parents the opportunity.
There were communications sent out to the parents via ParentSquare for voting. There were also several mentions about the deadline to vote on KWHI news morning, noon and evening broadcasts.
Parents of the students enrolled in BISD were the voters. They were encouraged to vote through their parent portal. Seems fair, I am not sure it is up to the entire City of Brenham what the school schedule is. I don’t have a child in BISD and the fact that my opinion was not needed does not upset me one bit.
It was sent to parents that have kids in school. If you don’t have kids in school why would you care or need to vote for a school calendar? This isn’t some kind of conspiracy against tax payers. chill
KWHI had a link to the vote as well as parents received a link through the Parent Square portal being used district wide. It shouldn’t matter to “taxpayers” what the calendar is as parents are the ones who have to make additional arrangements. The parents in the district as well as the school board voted on this, that’s who!
They asked the parents to vote via email and Parent Square for sure. Teachers and staff always vote.
You voted on the school board trustees to make decisions for the district.