Durango School District 9-R will not change its calendar to align with Fort Lewis College’s.
“President Dene Thomas asked us to consider coordinating our spring break with theirs,” 9-R Superintendent Dan Snowberger told the 9-R board at its work session Tuesday night. “It creates a challenge. They’re on spring break now, so the parents are off while the kids are still in school, and their kids are off while the parents are back at work during our spring break at the end of the month.”
The problem, the board said, is the difference in length of school years and quarters versus semesters. FLC finishes in April, while 9-R is in session until the beginning of June.
The current 9-R schedule has spring break at the end of the nine-week winter quarter, at the end of March, Snowberger said.
“Anytime,” said Kenna Willis, the ex-officio student representative to the board, when asked when she would like to have the break. “Right now, the big buzz at school is ‘Can we just have spring break now?’
Looking at how long it would be between a spring break the first week of March and the end of school, she wondered if some three-day weekends could be built in by moving staff development days to after the break, an idea that turned out to be much more complicated than it sounded.
“We all understand why Dene Thomas is asking,” board secretary Stephanie Moran said. “But they’re done six weeks later, and we’re not.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
