Wednesday school schedule polarizing between CB and Gunnison

School board recognizes, “No answer will make everybody happy”

By Kendra Walker

As the Gunnison Watershed School District board reviews the draft calendar for next year, they are also weighing the pros and cons of the district-wide Wednesday early release schedule. During their January 27 meeting, superintendent Leslie Nichols presented survey results revealing student, parent and staff feelings around the midweek early school release schedule. Initially, results show a disparity between north and south valley, and the board wants to keep gathering community feedback and continue the conversation about how the schedule might be improved. 

The 2025/2026 school calendar draft follows a similar rhythm as the last several years with all students having 171 instructional days. There are differences in some school holidays and breaks between the Crested Butte and Gunnison Schools due to Crested Butte Mountain Resort (CBMR) and Western Colorado University (WCU) schedules.

The Wednesday early release schedule began in Crested Butte in 2018 and was then implemented district-wide in 2021. Schools release between 1:45 and 2 p.m. with the school buses running at that time, and students have the option to attend free after-school programming until the usual 3:30 p.m. release time. “This time is for teachers,” said Nichols, explaining that it allows for teacher planning, collaborating, meeting and professional development, as well as allows time for teachers to meet with students for extra support. 

However, the district and the school board have heard feedback that the Wednesday early release is difficult for families and scheduling. The district recently sent out a survey to students, staff and parents for additional insights, and Nichols presented the results to the board. She noted that she used Perplexity AI: Sonar to help her analyze the written responses to questions about benefits, challenges and suggestions for improvement. 

“Overwhelmingly, students like Wednesday early release,” said Nichols. For middle school, 98% of the CBCS students surveyed indicated they either love it or like it, and about 94% of Gunnison students either love it or like it. 

For high school, approximately 99% of CBCS students love it or like it, and about 89% of Gunnison students love it or like it. 

Students noted benefits such as extra homework time and academic support, athletic and recreational activities, personal well-being, social and family time and work schedule benefits. Seventy percent reported having no challenges, while some challenges mentioned included transportation issues, sports/activities timing, late lunch concerns and long classes. 

The parent survey results were “quite different than the student results,” said Nichols. “They’re really different when you look at the communities.” Overall, in Crested Butte, approximately 75% either like it or love it; however, approximately 69% of parents in Gunnison either dislike it or hate it. “Those are dramatic differences, and this is hard,” said Nichols. 

At CBCS, all high school parents who took the survey either like or love the schedule, while 65% of elementary school parents and 75% of middle school parents like or love it. Gunnison parents are less pleased with the early release schedule, with 62% of Lake School parents, 71% of Gunnison Elementary parents, 81% of Gunnison Middle School parents and 55% of Gunnison High School parents saying they either dislike it or hate it. 

Among benefits, parents noted sports, activities and recreation, family time, academic support, extracurricular activities, scheduling flexibility and student well-being. “It’s important to note that a significant number of respondents (in Gunnison) stated that there were no benefits or advantages to the Wednesday early release for their families,” said Nichols. Among challenges, parents noted work schedule challenges, childcare issues, transportation and logistics, unsupervised time for children, educational concerns and after-school program limitations. 

When asked for their thoughts on improvements, parent responses included eliminating the early release schedule, changing the day or structure, providing more after-school programs and improving transportation.

With staff results, 58% of teachers said they either like or love Wednesday early release. That breaks down to 83% of Crested Butte staff and 49% of Gunnison staff saying they like it or love it. Staff mentioned such benefits as collaboration and meeting time, planning and preparation, workload management, student support and personal benefits. Among challenges, staff noted too many meetings, loss of instructional time, disrupted weekly routine, student related challenges such as behavior, focus and attendance issues, and inequity among staff. Staff suggested more designated planning time, fewer meetings and professional development, eliminating early release or moving it to a different day or format, and more time for independent work time, collaboration and student support. 

“This is hard, y’all,” said Nichols. “I do have a preference for maintaining the early release. I think we could work on improving it. I haven’t figured out a better structure on how to find time in the work week for our staff to do the work that they want to do. It’s obviously not perfect for all of our staff. We have this community split among parents that’s really challenging and complicated and I don’t have immediate answers. Our students find it very appealing. Changing schedules is hard, but staying the same for the folks who are really dissatisfied with it is hard. Changing it for all the folks and all the structures that we’ve built is hard.”

Board member Jody Coleman said that teachers might feel bogged down with more faculty and professional development meetings. “A teacher never has enough time to plan. Teachers are helping kids all the time. For teachers to meet the standards of test scores or raise them and decide on curriculum, we need time to meet. There are so many demands of what is expected from teachers academically, let alone social, emotional growth and physiological growth,” she said. 

“But man do I hear the criticism in Gunnison about this from parents,” she continued. “I think it’s so hard for parents to look at school as just a babysitting place. We are not in a babysitting job, we are in an education job. We need to have a partnership with the parents about what that really looks like.”

Coleman made it known that she wants people to reach out to her and the board to talk about it. “I want to invite the public to work with us instead of criticizing it and just saying, ‘fix it.’ I really want to help parents, but we need help too in solving this for you. Let’s solve this together.”

“No answer will make everybody happy,” said board member Mark VanderVeer, noting from personal experience that his work schedule has never lined up with his kid’s school schedules. “We’ve got 2,000 students…it’s going to be hard to line up for anyone.”

Nichols also suggested that the district could create a community working group to brainstorm ideas around Wednesday early release and reach out to the survey participants to join.

The school board plans to revisit the conversation during their February 10 board meeting before approving the 2025/26 calendar. While Nichols said her preference was to keep the Wednesday early release as is for now, she is open to the board’s suggestions and ideas should they express the desire to change it.