The District 205 school calendar was amended at last night’s meeting and the start of school was moved back a week from Thursday, August 26, for the first day of students to Thursday, September 2.
Board members were given the data from a survey of school staff and parents about which date they preferred. Staff voting to keep the dates as they were while parents were more in favor of the September 2 start.
Galesburg High School will have to be without power at some point over the summer as the school switches over to new upgraded electrical, causing a two-week shut down which is estimated to begin mid-August.
With Galesburg High School home to the centralized kitchen for the entire district, this creates an issue with feeding students if school starts early.
“We’re investigating that now. When we did phase one, you may recall that we did design that to have a generator backup for that portion of the building,” Lee Marbach with Russell Construction told board members Monday night. “So for sure the kitchen, we’re looking at that [so you] wouldn’t have to take all the food out of the freezers. So, we’d have a generator that’d power the central kitchen.”
When asked to give a percentage of confidence in the work being ready by August 26 so that school could start on time, Marbach said he was at “10-percent or lower.” Applying the same measurement to the other proposed dates, September 2 was 60-percent and September 8 was 95-100 percent.
Should the school still be without power, high school students would start the year in remote while the rest of the district is in-person.
“I’m not in favor of any of them being in remote,” stated board member Rodney Phelps, “but we’ve got to school started. And, I think our [older students] I know there are some outliers, but I think our [older students] can navigate through remote.”
As far as construction goes at the high school building, the addition on the northern wing of the building is expected to be finished up at the end of December and the auditorium and band/choir expansion is expected to be wrapped up by March 2022.
