JACKSON BOARD OKs REVISED COMMENCEMENT DATE

JACKSON -- The Jackson Board of Education Tuesday adopted an end-of-school calendar that will add extra days to the school year to compensate for weather days taken this winter.

Under the revised calender, the last day of school will be Wednesday, June 1.

The board also heard a report on the in-school gifted student program that will begin in grades 4-7 in the 1995-96 school year.

Included in the revised end-of-school schedule is the baccalaureate service that will be held at 7:30 p.m., Sunday, May 22, in the high school gymnasium.

The high school commencement will be held at 7:30 p.m. June 1 in the Jackson High School Stadium, weather permitting.

Superintendent Wayne Maupin said the school year had to be lengthened this year because nine days of school were missed due to snow and ice this past winter.

"The extension will fulfill our teacher contracts and meet the state requirement of 176 days of instruction," Maupin said.

Assistant Superintendent Fred Jones briefed the board on the Gifted Student Education Program.

Jones said the district's current gifted education program is an after-school program for selected students in grades 1-12. It now has an enrollment of 100 students.

A committee of interested parents, teachers, counselors, and administrators met several times during the school year to review the program, and made several recommendations for the board, including:

-- The in-school gifted student education will be developed during the coming school year for implementation in the 1995-96 school year, after the new middle school is completed.

-- The program initially will be limited to students in grades 4-7, and will be located in a classroom at the new middle school, now under construction.

-- A gifted teacher will be designated or hired for the new program.

"We've looked at a number of gifted student education programs in other school districts," Jones said of the committee's recommendations. "This will not solve all of our problems, but it's an attempt to address some of them. We feel the plan is a good place to start."

Jones said the current, after-school gifted student program offers benefits but misses some of the things a good gifted education program should provide.

"With an in-school program, we can serve the needs of the gifted students to a larger extent than we are now," he said.

Although the program initially will be restricted to gifted students in grades 4-7, Jones said the district hopes to eventually include junior and senior high school students.

"We picked those grades (4-7) because it is the intermediate elementary grades and the middle school grades," he said. "We have not decided whether it will be an all-day or half-day program, nor do we have a curriculum adopted yet. This will be done during the coming school year."

The school board is expected to act on the proposal prior to the end of the school year.