Valdez school board advances two-week spring break for 2028, wants one week after

Valdez students could get two weeks of spring break in 2028, but the school board wants one-week breaks after that.

The Valdez City Schools Board of Education voted 5-0 Monday, with two members absent, to give first approval to a 2027-28 calendar that has students off March 6 to 17. Members also agreed that later years should get a one-week break. The calendar needs a second vote before it's final.

The extra week off would push the end of the school year back a week, though it would still end before Memorial Day weekend, Superintendent Jason Weber told the board, according to the meeting minutes.

The long break has come around before. 2027-28 is "year three when we have historically done that," Weber wrote in a memo to the board. The district surveyed certified staff, classified staff and parents, and all three groups favored two weeks off, though only 27 parents answered and Weber wrote that it was hard to know whether they were representative. The calendar committee narrowly picked the two-week option.

Several board members raised concerns. Carey Wade, who served on the committee, said feedback had been divided and asked whether two weeks off fits the district's priorities of attendance and academic achievement. She noted the break misses a week when many students will be away for basketball, and said the week left out could bring an estimated 250 student absences for extracurricular activities.

Scott McCumby said the extra week could hurt attendance and academic performance. Kyra Meyer said it cuts instructional time, and questioned whether adding a week at the end of the year makes up for that during spring testing.

Kathleen Todd asked whether the break could move to cover more of those activities. Weber said regional and state competitions fall about a week apart, which makes it hard to fit a two-week break around both. The committee also weighed teachers' concerns about having enough instructional time for math, reading and writing before April testing, he said.

Kalin King then polled the board, and members agreed to plan on one-week spring breaks in later years.

The board also voted 5-0 to create an accounting and payroll clerk job, to take part of the payroll work off the plate of the district's director of business services.

Until 2018, the district had a full-time payroll technician. Budget cuts moved the work to the business services director, and the director has done it since, Susan Love, who now holds the job, wrote in a memo to the board. Her predecessor's years of experience made that work, she wrote, but for her, payroll on top of budget management, insurance and food service "has not been manageable."

The setup also "does not conform with accounting best practices for internal control, where dual signatures and review for disbursements protect VCS against errors and/or fraud," Love wrote. The clerk would help process payroll, while keeping a division of duties with the director so internal control is ensured.

The change doesn't add a position. The new job sits beside the district's existing accounts payable and receivable clerk, and under the current budget the district will fill one or the other. Pay runs $24.85 to $36.60 an hour, one row below the old payroll technician on the district's salary schedule. Love estimated the added cost at $6,000 to $8,000 in salary and benefits, paid from undesignated reserves if it takes effect this school year, and called it cheaper than hiring a payroll contractor or another full-time employee. One downside, she wrote: it "does not relieve full scope of payroll processing from Director."