Members of the Haralson County School Board met Monday night in a called meeting to hear a representative from Murray County Schools System talk about their newly adopted 160-day school calendar.

Danny Dunn of Murray County Schools presented a synopsis of the changes made at the school system in an effort to make up for the budget cuts passed down to the state’s public schools last year from the governor’s office. Murray County, which operates 10 county schools, opted for a 160-day school calendar with an extended work day.

With the 160-day calendar, students stay in the classroom longer. According to Dunn, elementary schools made the biggest change by extending their day by 50 minutes. The middle schools and high schools were already close to the minimum minutes required for the change in schedule.

Teachers at Murray County now work a 9-hour day instead of an 8-hour day. Murray County began classes on Sept. 8, teachers began Sept. 1, and school will end as usual in May. As a result, the school system had to abandon their block schedules, with four 90-minute class periods a day, in favor of a full-year schedule with seven 65-minute class periods a day.

To accommodate the 9-hour day, which makes up for the lack of school days in August, school begins at the middle schools and high schools at 7:15 a.m. and ends at 4:15 p.m. while the elementary schools begin at 7:15 a.m. and ends at 3:45 p.m. However, cutting out school days in August was one of the biggest savings factors for the county, according to Dunn.

“We saved a lot of money on our electricity bill because Georgia Power sets rates in August based on how much you use in that month, so the higher your usage, the higher your rates for the year,” Dunn said. “So by not using a lot of electricity in August because school was not in session, we were able to reduce our rates for the rest of the year.”

According to Dunn, the school system was able to save $65,000 on their electricity bill for the month of August by starting school in September. He also estimated the school saved $26,000 on August fuel costs, $24,550 by not having to hire substitute teachers in August, and – when calculated with other savings – the school system saved a minimum of $197,050. Although that does amount does not include money saved in salaries due to furloughs or other savings the school may see before the end of the year.

Dunn said while the calendar change did affect several aspects of the school system, such as special education summer school, work days, bus routs, sick leave, grading periods and curriculum pacing, overall the transition was “seamless.”

However, he said there were a few surprises Murray County did not anticipate.

“We made this decision quickly, and we tried to be as prepared as possible,” Dunn said, “however, we didn’t think of everything.”

The school system still had to staff some personnel at the high school in August in order to process transcripts for records requests from colleges. Participation in the elementary school aftercare program also dropped. Now only one of the elementary schools still operates an aftercare program. The system also encountered conflicts with their new 9-hour day and the 8-hour day the school resource officers follow.

“The resource officers are employees of the sheriff’s office,” Dunn said. “So we had to decide if we wanted them there directing traffic in the mornings or the afternoons because they could only work eight hours.”

Dunn said one of the system’s biggest challenges was coordinating the bus schedule; however, once the bus routes were organized, everything ran very smoothly.

“Morale was not very good in the elementary schools until the bus schedule got straightened out,” Dunn said, “but since then morale has jumped significantly.”

Dunn said the affect the new schedule has had on students’ academic performance has yet to be determined as standardized testing just began this week. However, he did note that student and teacher attendance has improved, and if the student’s scores do come back showing a negative impact, Dunn said the current schedule will be abandoned next year.

Earlier this month, the Haralson County Schools Board heard from a representative of Peach County Schools, who have adopted a four-day week school calendar and manages nine county schools.

Under their new calendar, Peach County students resume school on Aug. 4 and end on May 21. Teachers begin the year on July 27. Most of the school system’s weeks run Tuesday through Friday, and the work day consists of 10 hours, according to their PowerPoint presentation.

Peach County estimates that they will save a minimum of $499,037 through their transportation and utilities cut backs ($313,000) and from not purchasing additional testing documents from an outside source ($186,037).

Under their new calendars, both Peach and Murray Counties boast that their students spend more than the state’s minimum amount of instructional minutes in the classroom. Both systems also said their new schedules enabled them to retain positions rather than implement layoffs. Both systems also maintained an 8-hour work day for administrative staff.

In addition to an increase in teacher attendance, Peach County also reported a decline in discipline incidents by 37.9 percent from last year. However, Peach County reported a increase in student absences this year, but attributed it to the increase in influenza cases.

At the end of Dunn’s presentation, the board opened the floor for comments.

Haralson County Board of Education Superintendent Brett Stanton called the two school systems brave for making changes and being inventive with their solutions to their budget issues.

“Murray County and Peach County are trailblazers and should be commended for making these difficult changes,” he said.

The board made no decision on Haralson County’s calendar for next year. They will further review and consider the information given them by Murray and Peach County Schools and will continue discussions in the next board meeting.

“The board will also be looking for community input before making a final decision some time in March,” said Haralson County Schools System Public Information Officer Kersha Cartwright.

The board closed the called meeting by passing a motion to label two trailers no longer in use at the former District Office in Buchanan as surplus property to make them available to the system to sell in the future.

The next scheduled Haralson County Board of Education work session is scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 1, followed by the regular meeting 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 4. Both meetings will be held at the new District Office on Robertson Avenue in Tallapoosa.