Here’s how to vote on the RPSB 2023–2024 school year calendar options

RAPIDES PARISH, La. (KALB) - For the 2023–2024 school year, the Rapides Parish School System is seeking feedback from students, faculty, families and community members on the development of next school year’s academic calendar.

The Rapides Parish School Board announced on Tuesday, January 17, that there are four options being considered.

The first option is the Traditional Calendar. It offers the typical summer and winter breaks and the holiday schedules that students are currently on.

Option two is the Mid-August Start Calendar, which offers a start day of August 14 and the last day of school would be August 23. In this option, students would start a week later and a couple of the teacher development days would switch up, but other than that, it looks much like the Traditional Calendar.

The third option is the Later August Start Calendar. With this option, students would start school on August 21 and would get out on May 24. This option resembles the others but would slightly alter some of the holidays. For instance, this option has one less day during the Christmas break.

Option four is a Balanced Calendar. It closely resembles what is commonly referred to as ‘Year Around School’. With the Balanced Calendar, students would be in school for nine weeks and then would have two weeks out. That pattern would continue throughout the year.

“Regardless of the option, we hope that it is in the best interest of every parent, stakeholder and student,” said Brendan Walls, public relations specialist for the Rapides Parish School Board. “We think that allowing the community to vote and give them time to vote is the best solution to start us off.”

“Most importantly, we want to adopt a calendar every year that feeds into the Rapides Parish Public School System associated with the academic growth of our students,” said Superintendent Jeff Powell. “We want every child to be able to read at grade level at the end of third grade. We want students in fourth to eighth grade to reach their maximum potential, while connecting with cocurricular and extracurricular activities. And, of course, at the high school level we want to support our students and their family in selecting the right graduation pathway.”

To select a calendar option, visit www.rpsb.us. Voting will close at 4 p.m. on Friday, January 27. In the event that no calendar receives 50% or more of the overall vote, there will be a runoff between the top two options between January 30 and February 3.

At the February 7 school board meeting, the calendar options, as well as the survey results, will be presented to the RPSB board members, where a vote on the calendar options will take place.

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