Barrow High Heads to 1A State Tournaments; ACT Week, Spring Break Confirmed

Barrow High School’s athletic season and testing schedule converge in March, according to materials from the North Slope Borough School District public calendar and calendar extracts, with the district listing Barrow teams headed to the 1A State Basketball Tournament in Anchorage while the March 2025 calendar marks March 7 as an End of Quarter and March 20 and 21 as Vacation Days. The original district summary notes regional basketball tournaments, the 1A State tournament in Anchorage, an ACT testing week, and “confirmed dates for spring” in its description of the public calendar.

The March 2025 month fragment in the Barrow High School 2024-2025 extract shows March 7 labeled E (End of Quarter) and March 20-21 labeled V (Vacation Day), and lists “Number of Inservice Days: 0” and “Number of Student Days: 19.” That same March fragment also contains a conflicting line later in the excerpt showing “Number of Inservice Days: 0 Number of Student Days: 0 Number of Teacher Days: 0,” indicating an internal inconsistency within the provided calendar materials. Each calendar extract header carries the approval metadata line “Approved By: Ian Acuna Title: Data Manager.”

The public summary asserts an ACT testing week is on the NSBSD calendar, and the district calendar legend explicitly includes T = Testing. However, the March 2025 fragment provided does not display any T markings for March; the materials do not supply the specific ACT dates. Other explicit markings across multi-year extracts show testing, inservice, and holiday patterns in surrounding months: Aug 10, 11 and 14, 2023 are marked I (Inservice Day); Aug 15-16, 2023 are marked W (Teacher Workday) with Aug 17, 2023 marked O (School Opens); Feb 17, 2025 is marked I while Feb 18-19, 2025 show M (Meeting) in the 2024-2025 extract. The 2022-2023 extract records multiple December 2022 vacation days (Dec 19-23 and Dec 27-30) and Dec 16, 2022 as E (End of Quarter).

A separate Meetings Boardbook fragment is labeled “DRAFT - DO NOT DISTRIBUTE,” contains the file path \\brw\bao\Admin\NSBSD - Assessment & Accountability\Calendars - School\FY23\Calendars - Final Drafts\SY23 Calendar - Barrow High School (DRAFT), and lists “Last Updated: Ian Acuna, Data Manager” with a 03/15/2022 timestamp. That draft marker appears alongside calendar extracts that carry the “Approved By: Ian Acuna” header, signaling mixed signals in the supplied materials about whether the public calendar in circulation is a final approved version or a work-in-progress.

The overlap of an asserted 1A State tournament trip to Anchorage, an ACT testing week listed in the district summary, and the March 7 end-of-quarter plus March 20-21 vacation days has concrete implications for students’ instructional time: the March extract’s 19 student days and the vacation markings mean classroom continuity will shift during a month when higher-stakes testing and regional-to-state travel are scheduled. For Barrow families and school leaders, that timing intensifies equity concerns around missed instructional time, cost and logistics of travel to Anchorage for players, and clear scheduling for juniors who may be scheduled for ACT tests.

The calendar legend across extracts defines relevant codes (E = End of Quarter, V = Vacation Day, T = Testing, I = Inservice Day, M = Meeting), and the presence of both approved headers and a “DRAFT - DO NOT DISTRIBUTE” boardbook fragment suggests the district’s publicly shared calendar should be treated as containing some unresolved entries until NSBSD confirms final tournament dates, ACT testing days, and the full scope of spring break around March 20-21. These confirmations will determine final student-day counts and the district supports needed for students traveling to Anchorage and preparing for statewide tests.