The Washington School Board made a unanimous decision Tuesday, February 18th that the district would remain on a five-day school week calendar instead of transitioning to four days per week. This followed a several month lead-up process, which included discussions with a similar sized district, Saydel, in the Des Moines area, who had recently made the change. The public and board participated in an indepth meeting January 15th in the Washington High School auditorium, with a presentation and community involvement, Q&A, and distribution of an information packet. Following that meeting a survey was sent to parents, staff and teachers, with nearly 1000 responses where they could share their thoughts and concerns. 

Washington Superintendent Willie Stone spoke with KCII News this week about how he felt the district did their due diligence and how impressed he was with the amount of community involvement in the process, “The process started last year when we started having that conversation as a board. At that time we said it’s too late for us to look at it. We’ll look into getting more information, get more data from our community. We did take a survey at that time and the survey showed that we should at least look into it. Survey participation was high. There’s a district that’s our size, Saydel, that switched to it. We pretty much stated all along we’re going to try to wait until October or November and then interview them and see how things are going. The process wasn’t really rushed, it was just planned that way. As always, our community does a great job of being involved and trying to help make decisions that are best for our kids and I thought this went really well.”

Stone has also said that the district will continue to monitor future options and the work of legislators at the Iowa State House this session which has included discussion of a bill for a year-round school calendar.