The Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD#2) Board of Trustees voted to keep current calendars in place for schools in the district, despite examining a 165-day, district-wide, five-day-per-week calendar in January.

Over 70 people, a majority from Saratoga, came to the meeting in support of keeping the current calendars, which consist of a four-day week for Saratoga schools, a four and one-half-day week for H.E.M. schools, and a five-day week for Encampment schools.

The board also voted to extend the schedule through the 2011-12 school year.

The vote on a motion to keep the current calendars was 8-1, and another motion to extend the calendar another year was also 8-1, with Board Vice Chairman Jim Hill casting a nay vote on both motions.

“I believe we need to increase hours in elementary, and I don’t think this is the best package for our elementary children,” Hill said of the current schedules before the vote.

Hill also said the motion to extend the calendars an extra year would not bind incoming board members from reviewing the calendar.

CCSD#2 Superintendent Bob Gates said that he had started preliminary research for the district to have a virtual kindergarten-through-eighth grade academy, and a virtual alternative high school for at-risk students.

Gates said he needed to know if he should continue or cease his research for virtual schools.

Board member Bob Patton was concerned that teachers may already be overworked with students in the classroom, but thought that the program should be researched further.

“It would be wise to really look at some of these,” Hill said of the virtual programs.

H.E.M. Principal Dale Kari informed the board that Jon Borah, a senior, has been selected to the Air Force Academy, in Colorado Springs, Colo.

Kari added that this was the second student of his to attend the academy.

The board also approved a motion to accept a lease of district-owned land to the town of Medicine Bow.

The land in question is a football field of the old high school, and the town plans to convert the area for use by the public.

The lease will last 25 years, and have an automatic extension of 25 years, which CCSD#2 and Medicine Bow attorney Bill MacPherson called “basically a 50-year lease”.

The board added a covenant to the lease that states the land must be available to the public if the town decides to sell the land, when it owns the land after the lease.