The plan for November’s conference schedule is to employ a combination of early dismissal and late arrival days to accommodate a variety of parents’ schedules.
Following the approval of the Moorestown Township school district calendar in late February, administrators got to work building the internal calendar. Parent-teacher conferences proved a topic of much debate in previous Board of Education meetings, and at last Tuesday night’s meeting, Superintendent Scott McCartney revealed the plan for handling conferences.
The plan for November’s conference schedule is to employ a combination of early dismissal and late arrival days to accommodate a variety of parents’ schedules, McCartney said. Additionally, he said the district also took away one of the half days, and this new day will feature a half- day schedule for teachers holding conferences while teachers and administrators who do not have conferences will provide alternate activities for students.
“We’re doing that as a trial to see how that works,” McCartney said.
Wednesday, Nov. 15 is scheduled as an early dismissal day, so that teachers can run conferences from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m., and Monday, Nov. 20 is a half-day with conferences taking place on both days from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16 will be the full day for students and half day for staff. Friday, Nov. 17 is also an early dismissal day as a “give back” day owed to staff for the additional hours they are working to facilitate conferences. Tuesday, Nov. 20 will be a late arrival day with conferences taking place from 8:15 a.m. to 1:35 p.m.
The district added one late arrival day into the conference schedule last year following feedback from parents who work second- and third-shift schedules. Those those time slots were filled quickly, but the district did not communicate the schedule change, McCartney said. As a result, some parents arrived with their children to school at the regularly scheduled time.
McCartney said parent-teacher conferences have been a point of conversation for months. He said administration received feedback from a multitude of stakeholders. He said they considered a variety of options from closing school entirely to changing the duration of conference time slots from 20 minutes to 15 minutes.
“In the end, I know I said this all along,” McCartney said. “We probably won’t satisfy everyone’s need or want in the conference schedule.”
Board member Mark Villanueva questioned why the staff “give back” day was scheduled for November when that month’s schedule already features several shortened days contributing to the idea of “no school November.”
McCartney explained that staff are working evening hours to accommodate conferences, and the additional workload is tiresome. So, they placed the “give back” day in that week to offset the exhaustion.
“There are other months that actually have less days than November,” McCartney said. “It’s a cute moniker that people say, but it’s not entirely accurate.”
The remainder of the calendar is still being scheduled, and the goal is to have the remainder of the calendar assembled by the end of June, McCartney said.
The next Moorestown Board of Education meeting will take place in William Allen Middle School on Tuesday, May 15 at 7 p.m.
