COEUR d'ALENE — Trustees of the Coeur d'Alene School District unanimously approved two items that will set change in motion for the upcoming school year.

The district will continue with a five-day school week, but with a few adjustments. Rather than a late-start Monday, the 2024-2025 school calendar will include an early-release Friday.

"Students will report to school an hour earlier on Mondays," Human Resources Director Eric Davis said during Monday's school board meeting. "We get an extra hour of instructional time at that point. We also pick up an extra hour for our classified staff that deals directly with students.

“That Friday release is two hours early, so students will leave two hours before our traditional Friday dismissal," he said. "Classified staff will lose two hours, classified staff that work with students who need to be there."

He said the district is currently over by 37 instructional hours at the elementary level, by 70 to 90 hours at the middle school level, more than 31 hours at the ninth-through-11th level and 50 hours more at the senior in high school level.

“We have some room to bring down the instructional hours to make sure that we are providing the instruction at the rate that we are funded by the state,” he said.

Classified staff that deal with students, such as paraprofessionals and classroom assistants, will see a one-hour decrease in scheduled hours per week.

Davis emphasized that no classified staff who directly work with students will lose benefits.

“There’s a lot of talk about people losing benefits," he said. "If you are an individual who is scheduled to work 30 hours with our students, and you lose an hour, that would drop you to 29, we will find that hour. You will not have any classified staff working with students lose benefits.”

The approved calendar has no impact on transportation, custodial services, nutrition services or any traditional classified building employees, Davis said.

“The idea that people are going to lose benefits is a misnomer," he said. "It is untrue."

Trustees approved a revised draft of elementary attendance zones to accommodate for students who will be displaced when Borah Elementary School closes at the end of the school year. The school will be repurposed to house the Coeur d'Alene Early Learning Center in efforts to balance the district's operating budget, which has been projected to have a $6 million shortfall if drastic cuts are not made.

The attendance zone changes will send about 114 Borah kids to Bryan Elementary, 36 to Fernan STEM Academy, four to Winton Elementary, eight to Dalton Elementary and 79 to Ramsey Magnet School of Science. Visit cdaschools.org for a map of the new attendance zone.

“It’s like playing a game of chess on a Monopoly board,” Trustee Jimmy McAndrew said.

He said the only glaring question he had was about capacity.

“There will be at least one campus that will be a little over 90% as we anticipate today, but I do think that it’s very possible that within the next year if we lose another few students that would drop them right down to 90 or slightly below," Superintendent Shon Hocker said. "It’s good long-term planning the committee has done as they’ve put these boundaries together.”

Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education Patti Morrison said Borah families will receive emails today informing them of the changes.

“They’ll know exactly their school, they’ll know their principal," she said. "They’re getting a warm welcome and an invitation to an event just for their families to come to the school and meet everybody and a few other nice things involved to start building that sense of belonging."

    Morrison