The Polk County Board of Education voted on Tuesday night (November 10) to keep up the four-day work week for students as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to require an extra day for staff to prepare and clean and based on recommendations put forth by Superintendent Laurie Atkins during the November work session in recent days.

Board members voted unanimously to keep up the schedule after the winter break concludes, which gives educators the chance to work on planning and update online classrooms while also providing a chance for custodial staff to thorough clean campuses.

As previously reported, Atkins said her goal in explaining the need to stick to the schedule during the spring is for students to continue to have at least one fixed schedule in their lives.

She also said that there’s no indication of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Public Health lifting restrictions at this time as well.

The schedule change does not impact holidays or Spring Break, Atkins said.

Additional plans for summer school – which will likely be needed to help students catch up on their academic level based on the shutdowns earlier in 2020 – will be announced at a later date.

Board members during their November session held in the HON Room at the CHS campus of the Polk County College and Career Academy to accommodate for space for the Teacher of the Year Ceremony took care of other items on the night. Among them was approval for the surplus of five buses that have not been operating in the fleet regularly but were being used as spares in case one broke down, or to scavenge parts when necessary.

Bids for the buses will be forthcoming following the surplus vote, and will be open for anyone in the community to purchase. The buses are all 1996 model Bluebirds and can hold up to 72 people at a time.

One other item approved by the board will allow the Rockmart and Cedartown High School competition cheer squads to travel to Columbus for the state cheer competition coming up in February with the season set to get underway in the coming weeks. Atkins explained the two teams wanted to go ahead and seek approval for their travel plans now, which will be based on whether they make it through regular season and region cheer competitions for 2020-21 and onward to state.

The two teams are likely to return to the floor in Columbus, since both have won opportunities to cheer for a state title over the past years.