photo by: Matt Resnick/Journal-World

Calendar committee co-chairs Jessica Rohrberg (left) and Jayci Roberson provide an overview of the district's community calendar for the 2024-25 school year on Monday, Feb. 12, 2024.

The Lawrence school board on Monday unanimously approved the district’s 2024-25 community calendar, with relatively few changes from the current school year’s calendar.

The district’s calendar committee, composed of both certified staff and classified staff, as well as building and district administrators, was represented at Monday’s meeting by co-chairs Jayci Roberson and Jessica Rohrberg. The committee co-chairs provided an overview of its proposed calendar, detailing the built in days for categories such as professional development, parent-teacher conferences, teacher contact, student hours, senior hours, teacher readiness and inclement weather. The parameters of the calendar are centered around state requirements, including one that school districts allot a minimum of 1,116 class-time hours for most K-12 grade levels.

One change to the newly-approved calendar is that a professional development day for early childhood education through fifth grade teachers is scheduled for a Wednesday in September. There are a total of 4.5 professional development days for elementary and high school grade levels, and five for the middle school level.

“Typically, most professional development days are on a Monday or Friday,” Rohrberg told the Journal-World. “So we’re just trialing one on a Wednesday to see if we can increase staff engagement.” Rohrberg added that the move would also preserve overall “seat-time with students” since Wednesdays are early release days.

Board member Yolanda Franklin said that she conducted a poll on her Facebook page asking parents and community members the day that they most preferred for professional development days.

“And the majority of them said Friday instead of the middle of the week,” Franklin said, adding that it’s difficult to get back in the flow of things on Thursday after the midweek break.

Board member Anne Costello said that a benefit to holding professional development days on Fridays is that it would reduce the need for substitutes “since a lot of teachers are already having to leave early on Fridays for sports and athletic events.”

The co-chairs said that they would take the suggestions from board members into consideration when building future calendars, which also included questions about the scheduling of parent-teacher conferences around fall break.

The first full day of classes for all grade levels is Aug. 14, while the final day of classes falls on May 22.

In other business, the board:

• Received an update from the district’s Human Resources team on the “effective employee” component of the district’s strategic plan. The presentation focused on the district’s recruitment and retention initiatives, as well as a comprehensive review of the district’s staffing data. Led by Kristen Ryan, the district’s executive director of Human Resources, members of the district’s HR team told the board that it plans on casting a wider recruitment net through participation in career fairs at the University of Texas at El Paso and Tennessee State University.

According to the presentation, the district’s participation at recruitment fairs this year has resulted in 25 interviews with prospective candidates, while 16 non-binding contracts have been offered to those candidates.

“I love that you’re recruiting in other spaces outside of our region,” said board president Kelly Jones.

The presentation also included a snapshot of the district’s overall staffing data, which displayed the number of staffing departures and openings. This also included the staffing count and fill-rate for substitute teachers, which is currently at 94.5%.

According to data provided in the presentation, the district’s staff count for certified personnel has decreased from 923 to 856 since Sept. 2022 — while the staff count for classified personnel has increased from 562 to 587.

• During his superintendent’s report, Anthony Lewis spotlighted Kansas City Chiefs rookie cornerback Ekow Boye-Doe, a 2018 Lawrence High alumnus. While Boye-Doe didn’t see the field during the Chiefs’ overtime Super Bowl victory over the 49ers on Sunday, he was a member of Kansas City’s playoff roster. After a stellar football career at K-State, Boye-Doe signed with Chiefs as an undrafted free agent last year.