HPS Board votes against Twin River joining CRC
While there are still three months to go in the current school year, the Hampton Board of Education set the district’s official calendar for the 2024-25 school year at its February meeting Monday night. Under the new calendar, the first day of school will be Wednesday, Aug. 14 and the last day for students will be May 16, 2025 with a noon dismissal. Graduation was set for May 10 at 2 p.m.
The fall break will fall on Friday, Oct. 4, giving students a three-day weekend and Easter break in April of 2025 will include a four-day weekend starting with a 2 p.m. dismissal on Thursday, April 17 and continuing through Monday, April 21. In addition there will be a spring break in March next year, with two days off back to back on March 13 and 14.
Students will also get two full weeks off from school for Christmas break, from Dec. 23 to Jan. 6. Supt. Holly Herzberg said the calendar also includes three makeup days built in for snow days.
In other action at the meeting on Monday, the board gave its approval to the format for the district’s local report for 2023-24. The report contains various pieces of information about the district and is required by the state to be published annually. Herzberg said the report will be published soon and made available to the community.
The school board also voted unanimously Monday night to deny a request from Twin River Public Schools to join the Crossroads Conference. As one of the schools that make up the conference, the Hampton board gets a say in whether the school, based in Genoa, can be allowed into the conference for extracurricular competitions. The vote this week by the various school boards followed an earlier vote by the participating schools’ superintendents.
Herzberg said she had voted no on the request because of the relative size of the two schools. If approved by member schools, Twin River will be the largest school in the conference, having more than three times the enrollment of Hampton.
In another agenda item, the board voted to revise Article 3 of the Parent-Student Handbook. The section in question dealt with students in foster care and had to do with transportation for such students. Herzberg said the school currently does not have any students who fit into that category.
Finally, during the Administration’s Reports part of the meeting, Herzberg announced that the board of the Hampton Public School Foundation had decided at a meeting on Sunday on a new name for the former Hampton Lutheran School building which is soon to become a community daycare center. She said the building will be called the Hawk Learning Center.
Herzberg said the word “early” had been considered for inclusion in the name, but the board decided to leave it out because at some point in the future the building might be used for some other purpose than for preschoolers.