Highland readies for start of 4-day school weeks

August in Iowa is known for two things — the Iowa State Fair and schools starting up again. At Highland, we are starting a pivotal year for the school district. We are taking some big, bold, and epic steps I believe will benefit the district for at least the next two decades.

We will be starting our 4-day week calendar. The calendar has a link on our webpage if you want to take a closer look at how it works. We believe this will provide more family time, more time for family appointments, a chance for students to do any school work, and a chance to gather themselves from the week and get ready for the next week. For Highland Schools, we want to be able to attract new teachers when necessary and retain the teachers we have right now. We believe that this will help everyone’s social-emotional health and restore some balance back into a busy life schedule. Teachers will have professional development on 16 Friday mornings throughout the school year. This gives them more quality time to work as a group, small teams, or individually to grow as a professional. While this change seems radical on the surface, we believe this change will help our students, staff, and families and promote a positive culture and learning environment for our students.

Our second major initiative is putting a $15 million dollar bond issue vote on the November ballot for the Highland voters. With any bond issue the number one question is, “Will it raise my taxes?” The answer is no! We are going to retire debt from our previous bond issue so we are just replacing old debt with new debt — there will be no tax increase!

Our Facilities Advisory Committee asked the board for a second competitive multipurpose gymnasium at the secondary, more collaboration and classroom spaces at the elementary, a new locker room at the secondary, and a revamped commons area at the high school. There will be entrance and site improvements at both buildings as well.

To be a leader in education, it does require some big, bold, and epic steps. Someone took those steps to create the Highland district back in the early 1960s. My hope is that we will want to move forward and help our future Huskies! Go Huskies!