Lincoln County School District #2 committee lays out calendar options; staff favors earlier start to preserve Fridays

Lincoln County School District #2 officials and community members spent a public work session reviewing two proposed 2025–26 school calendars and the tradeoffs that determine how many Fridays students get off and whether the district could start after Labor Day or extend the school year into June.

The discussion centered on two committee-built calendar options (called Calendar A and Calendar B), state contact-hour rules and operational constraints including custodial workloads, bus staffing and athletics. Superintendent Rob Erickson told attendees the district would not make “wholesale changes” for the coming school year without more study; nevertheless, the calendar committee recommended Calendar B as the proposed option after a staff survey that favored the earlier start option by a 78%–22% margin.

Why it matters: the choice affects families’ schedules, district payroll for support staff and when maintenance and capital projects can be completed. Facilities and transportation managers said shifting the year into June would compress summer project timelines and worsen staffing shortages, while teachers and some parents argued shorter weeks improve staff and student well-being.

The committee described the two calendars. Calendar A preserves a longer winter break; Calendar B shortens parts of the winter break to “gain more Fridays” during the year. Committee facilitator Jason Horsley told the meeting the calendars were created by laying high-use dates (athletics, music, other events) onto a yearly grid and adjusting professional-development days and school-start dates to maximize Fridays without reducing instructional requirements.

State rules and contact time: district staff explained the distinction between a traditional calendar (175 instructional days under Wyoming policy) and an alternate calendar, which requires local hearings and state approval and is reported in contact hours rather than days. District staff described contact-time rules as “two cheeks in a seat in front of a certified teacher,” and provided sample full-day contact-minute figures used for reporting (Coqueville Elementary 375 minutes; Osmond Elementary 355; Star Valley Middle School 375; Star Valley High School 378). Teachers work under 1,480-hour contracts and the state expects roughly 80 professional-development hours per teacher per year.

Operational constraints raised during the meeting included: - Facilities: Warren (facilities staff) said the district has 11 buildings that facilities staff must deep-clean over the summer using about 27 people; major maintenance and capital projects this summer totalled about $2,000,000. He said condensing summer work by moving instructional days into June would remove critical working days and lengthen project timelines. He cited the district’s roughly 600,000 square feet of building space and estimated the lost days would translate into roughly 1,100 hours of cleaning time. - Transportation: Ryan (transportation staff) said the district faces a driver shortage, many drivers have agricultural summer work, and the district cannot expand its fleet; the district currently transports roughly 600 additional elementary riders in the afternoon compared with the morning, and an hour between elementary and secondary dismissals is needed to run routes safely. - Payroll and budgeting: the business office noted that paying hourly summer work creates fiscal-year and payroll timing complications (fiscal-year close June 30), which adds accounting and administrative work when summer hours fall across fiscal years.

Support-staff impact and pay: committee members noted past calendar changes reduced support-staff work days; support staff pay could be reduced by roughly $1,100–$2,500 depending on the calendar chosen. Committee members said some positions receive adjusted day counts to reduce the effect, but budget and equity implications remain.

Instructional concerns and equity: teachers and parents urged caution about reducing instructional contact time without clear evidence on academic impact. Multiple speakers said current research on alternate calendars is inconclusive. Several classroom teachers said three-day weekends help teachers and students recharge and reported increased student fatigue on full five-day weeks, particularly in early elementary grades.

Extracurriculars and course-credit questions: secondary staff and families raised scheduling challenges for athletics and music if the school day were lengthened or moved. The district has previously explored counting supervised athletics toward PE credit but found implementation and equity issues; superintendent Erickson said the district has revisited possible solutions, including online options, but no districtwide change is adopted.

Community input and next steps: the district plans to continue outreach. Erickson said major calendar changes (for example, moving the district into June) would require broader community study and likely a third-party consultant to remove bias from analysis; the administration suggested community meetings and a longer data-collection process before a decision that would affect the 2026–27 year. For the 2025–26 year, the committee presented Calendar B (the option that gains Fridays by shortening the winter break) as the recommended proposed calendar based on the staff survey.

Quotes capturing the meeting tone include committee facilitator Jason Horsley: “I don’t vote personally on any of the surveys … my role is to facilitate the committee and try to collect all the data we can”; Brenda (district staff) on state contact-time rules: “What counts as a contact hour now with the Wyoming State Board of Education is basically two cheeks in a seat in front of a certified teacher”; and Warren (facilities staff) on summer projects: “Every day we get during the summer to complete projects is a big deal.”

Where the issue stands: no board action or formal policy change was taken at the work session. The committee will forward a proposed calendar and the staff-survey results to the board; the district indicated it would seek broader community input and consider hiring an outside consultant if the board directs a comprehensive study of calendar structure.

A follow-up: district staff said they can produce attendance and absence counts for specific Fridays and other dates on request; attendees also discussed legislative proposals (the “Summer Preservation Act” was mentioned) that could affect future calendar options by setting statewide start- and end-date requirements. The board and administration said they will continue community engagement before any binding change.