The Roaring Fork School Board voted to approve the first reading of the 2022-24 school district calendar at its regular board meeting Feb. 23.

Setting the school calendar is done every two years by the Calendar Committee; comprised of teachers, administrators, staff and board representatives. The committee evaluates feedback from the community, parents, students, and staff, then works to incorporate that feedback into the school calendar for the next two years.

The committee launched a survey in December to get feedback on interests related to the calendar. Kelsy Been, public information officer and chief of staff for Roaring Fork Schools, reported a very low response rate to the survey, which was open for four weeks.

Only 658 stakeholders participated in the survey (compared with more than 2,000 responses for the 2020 calendar survey). Of those who did participate, 61% of respondents indicated they were quite or very satisfied with the current school calendar, while 7% of respondents indicated they were not happy at all.

“That gave us clear direction that whatever we put out going forward needed to look pretty similar to our current calendar,” Been said.

Based on that feedback, the proposed draft largely mirrors this year’s calendar, with a few changes, including:

• The school year will start on a Wednesday instead of Monday — providing a few extra days of summer and creating a more gradual return to school with a shortened first week;

• The school year will end after Memorial Day;

• Fall break will increase to two days for a four-day weekend;

• Elementary and middle school students will switch to trimesters.

Ending school after Memorial Day resolves any conflicts that might arise between graduation and state events, like the conflict this year between graduation and the state track meet.

“Graduation was a big driving force to make sure we could have that graduation day without any conflict,” said Kenny Teitler, board member for District A and a member of the Calendar Committee. “We’re not going to satisfy everyone’s wants and needs, but we tried to design the calendar to meet the needs of as many people as we could.”

Some other benefits of the proposed calendar include balanced semesters and trimesters, ending the first semester prior to the start of winter break, and aligning the dates of spring break with the Garfield Re-2 School District.

The board will hear the second reading of the proposed calendar at its next regular board meeting and vote whether to approve it at that time.