Students and teachers all over the Cedar Rapids Community School District (CRCSD) are scanning the 2024-2025 school year calendar that has been approved by the district. However, within the calendar, something is missing. Early dismissal Fridays are gone.
The decision to ex short Fridays has been an ongoing situation since 2016. The superintendent at the time, Brad Buck, believed that it was critical for educators to receive additional training to provide the best possible education to their students, so, students have been released at 1:20 p.m. while staff complete professional development until 3:30.
“Instead of teachers having two hours of [professional learning (PL)] every Friday, we will now have a full day of PL every three to four weeks,” teacher Kyle Clark said. “It will not impact how many days of school we have—it’s all about getting 1080 instructional hours.”
With the change of short Fridays, there are a lot of pros and cons expressed by the student body. Students recognize that this change will have a large impact on the upcoming school year.
“I was sad about the Fridays being taken away, however, I started to think about the reasons why they were taken away and it started to make more sense,” freshman Kacey Cory said. “I think that it was a pretty reasonable decision and I’d like to have an extra day off once a month.”
After-school activities and students’ study time will change drastically with the extra hour added. Though there is an extra day off, some students are absent on Fridays for various extracurricular activities, missing some instructional days. With the change being made students will miss more learning opportunities.
“As an athlete, it will change the amount of times that I will have to prepare for tournaments,” freshman Lextyn Panky said. “I already have to leave school early on some Fridays, or even sometimes Thursdays, to get to tournaments on time. So, missing a half day is a lot less stressful than leaving a full day.”
Students and teachers are processing the switch and anticipating the changes that will come with it.
“Selfishly I liked the early outs. It gave an extra fun feeling to Fridays,” Clark said. “But, we have to give it a fair chance before we can make a fair assessment,”
