Calendar at GHS to change in August
By Steve Herring
Published in News on May 22, 2016 1:45 AM
Goldsboro High School will operate on a new calendar when it opens for the 2016-17 school year, with classes beginning Monday, Aug. 8, and ending on Tuesday, May 23, 2017.
Bell times to start and end the school day are expected to change as well.
Meeting in special called session Tuesday afternoon, the Wayne County Board of Education put the school on the same calendar as Wayne Early Middle College High School and Wayne School of Engineering.
The state's designation of Goldsboro High School as a "reform model" school allows the flexibility to make changes in areas such as the calendar and instructional programs.
"The primary purpose for adjusting the calendar at Goldsboro High School is to better align them with Wayne Community College so we can open up more course offerings to students there," Dr. David Lewis, assistant superintendent, said. "This will allow Goldsboro High School to align perfectly with Wayne Community, finish up first semester just before Christmas just as these other two schools do and finish up the second semester basically by Memorial Day every year just as the other two schools do."
Board Chairman Chris West asked if the county's other high schools could be added.
"We are hoping that in due time to be able to come back to you with that request," Lewis said. "But right now, all we can do is Goldsboro."
"This is a question that is going to be asked of me, because it has already been asked of me," board member Pat Burden said. "That is, how are we going to meet our transportation guidelines if these three schools are on the same schedule?"
Lewis said he has spoken with school system transportation director Robert Lee who does not think it will be a problem.
"Goldsboro will continue to run its traditional bus routes in the morning to get kids to school," Lewis said. "The only students you have to worry about are those who finish their day on the Wayne Community campus rather than finishing their day on Goldsboro High School campus. In that case, I think what we are discussing is simply using the existing buses that already depart Wayne Early Middle College High School to bring the Goldsboro kids back to wherever their home is at the end of the day."
Superintendent Dr. Michael Dunsmore said the system has "17 yellow buses" that go everywhere in the county from Wayne Community College.
"So we would just incorporate Goldsboro," he said.
Lewis said perhaps the most difficult part to work out will be bell times at the school.
"I don't know that we are going to be looking for an exact match between bell schedules at Goldsboro High School and bell schedules at the Wayne School of Engineering and Wayne Early Middle College High School," he said. "I think that what you will see when we bring back suggested start and end times for Goldsboro High School is sort of a mix between the two -- probably not waiting as late in the morning to start and probably not waiting as late in the afternoon for most kids to finish.
"The only students who would finish up late, and when I say late, I mean Early Middle College late, will be the ones who take us up on that offer to go over to Wayne Community. The other students at Goldsboro High School, we would not want to hold so late in the day."
Lewis said his comments about possible changes in bell times were just for information, but that the board can expect to see changes for Goldsboro High School when he brings back recommended start and end times for all county schools.
"The two biggest things that we are looking at is the start-stop schedule of the school day so we can align with the community college to take advantage of their CTE (career and technical education) programming," Dunsmore said. "The other piece is the licensure for staff. The biggest thing that we have with that is it will give us a (budget) line item allotment of 'X' number of teachers. With all of our other traditional buildings, we have to have so many teachers that are aligned for that individual slot of money. With this we will be able to get one lump sum and be a little more creative in how we hire our teachers and not have quite as many restrictions.
"No. 2, we will be able to hire teachers not necessarily to teach from 7 to 3. We can hire a teacher who meets the criteria just to come in and teach, for example, Mandarin Chinese, or AP physics, AP trigonometry or those types of classes."
The county has a wealth of knowledge and resources at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base as well as retirees willing to teach those classes, but who don't want to teach five days a week, he said.
"So that opens up a whole new area," Dunsmore said.
Dunsmore said that in talking with students and others than an interest has been expressed in a cosmetology program.
"That is one of the things that Wayne Community College dropped several years ago," he said. "But yet that is what the high school students want. So Wayne Community College is very interested in partnering with us in doing that at Goldsboro because it is going to provide students for them after high school.
"They are also looking at a culinary program. So there are a lot of partnership availabilities that we as a board can't take 'X' amount of dollars to create those at every high school in the county. But we have a chance of sharing those resources with the community college."