Morning alarms ring shrilly. Hands hit the snooze buttons. Across the district, this dreaded sound marks the first day of school for thousands of students, but this year, it came a week earlier than usual.
Starting in the 2024-25 school year, the Texarkana Independent School District decided to start school on Aug. 7 instead of Aug. 14, a whole week ahead of schedule. To compensate, a “winter break” was added in February, thus pushing back spring break to April.
“I’ve been doing the calendar for a long time, and we’ve always maintained the one spring break calendar for many, many years. And the reason behind that was mainly because it put us in alignment with Texarkana College, especially since we have a lot of kids in dual credit,” Director of Curriculum and Instruction Christy Tidwell said. “But every year I would get a lot of requests and questions asking why we can’t be on the same calendar as Pleasant Grove and Liberty Eylau and all of them and so we started developing two of them.”
These requests for such a schedule change were reflected district-wide, with teachers and principals alike coming together to create a survey that would further communicate these wants.
“What I really love is they utilized all areas between the staff, parents and students, and it was an overwhelming response,” Director of Communications and Marketing Kelly Bixler said. “There was over 50% [that wanted the change] on the survey that she conducted, so she allowed for every party to have their voice and to kind of inform her direction.”
This direction led to the creation of both the 24-25 and 25-26 calendars thus far, with the effects of this implemented change reaching far beyond opinions within the survey.
“I think it will impact staff, because I think childcare for a lot of parents was a big issue, especially for teachers whose kids went to school out of district,” Tidwell said. “The calendar is also structured so that there are smaller breaks all the way through, so I think it really gives us some good concentrated times for teaching, but it also gives us those breaks.”
These smaller breaks present other potential benefits as well, specifically regarding attendance.
“I think it will increase attendance,” Bixler said. “Families can have the ability to plan on those multiple off days to take their vacation, so they’re not taking students out of class because they have multiple opportunities.”
For students with family that go to school in a different district, this calendar is beneficial.
“I think [the new calendar] is pretty good. I go to Texas High but the rest of my family goes to PG,” senior Luke Traylor said. “They have a winter break whenever I’ve never had a winter break, and so they don’t get to go on vacation while I’d still be at school. It’s pretty nice, I’ll get to join them this year.”
Despite certain advantages, some students have had mixed opinions on this change, questioning its relevance and suddenness.
“It kind of caught me by surprise,” senior Kai-Ly Gaylor said. “I’m not a huge fan of the fact that we had to start school earlier, but it is nice that we get a winter break.”
It further presents certain challenges for sports, whose schedules have revolved around the old calendar for years.
“Don’t get me wrong, I think it is really interesting, and it’ll be nice to have a small break every grading period,” Drill Team Director Amber Reynolds said. “It’s just starting to be kind of difficult thinking of our spring calendar, because we’ve had the same template of events for the last several years. So with the calendar change, it’s hard to schedule tryouts so early in the spring semester, and with the spring break in April, it also means that we’ll miss an entire week of practice before putting on the show.”
Even with these adjustments, this new schedule won’t detract from any major requirements, with all variations of the calendar meeting such regulations while still being open to opinion.
“You know, there’s the state has required minutes and we have to have annual required days in a teacher’s contract, and so we have to make sure that we, balance you know, the things that people would like to have, and still think about what has to be done,” Tidwell said. “It’s a very difficult balance to meet everyone’s needs, but we did send out three different versions once the calendar was developed with a final poll, with the overwhelming majority wanting to double break.”
This majority was especially overwhelming in terms of teacher feedback, where many were willing to participate in the teacher workdays present on the calendar.
“[According to the surveys] over 90% of the staff are committed to wanting to be here for those instructional planning days,” Bixler said. “And so I think that’s really important to highlight because the staff wants to be here learning and growing and preparing for instruction by choice.”
Although not completely set in stone for the future, this new 2024-25 calendar hopes to make minor yet positive change across the district, benefiting students, parents and teachers in the long run.
“I really think that it supports a very collaborative culture,” Tidwell said. “And once you start really listening to people and taking their voice into consideration, I think that really does create that strong culture.”
