There’s still no two-week spring break planned, but there are some minor tweaks proposed for next year’s school calendar.
At the most recent board of education meeting on March 19, superintendent Jeremy Morrow outlined the latest version of the calendar following a period of consultation.
“It does have a few changes,” he told the trustees.
The school district has to submit its calendar for the coming year to the Ministry of Education by the end of March. Earlier this year, it made the draft of next year’s calendar public for approximately a month in order to get input from stakeholders and parents.
“There was lots of feedback from our community,” Morrow said.
The district received 51 submissions concerning the school calendar. Board chair Richard Franklin echoed the superintendent’s sentiments about the strong response.
“We asked for feedback, and we listened to what the people said,” he said.
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There has been interest in switching to a two-week spring break period, but Morrow conceded the district will need to get more input before it can make the change, adding it is something to consider for the future.
“If we’re going to make a structural shift to the calendar, it needs to be done through the lens of how it can best support the strategic plan,” he told the board.
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As far as actual changes, one change will be to move an early Pro-D day from Sept. 20 to Sept. 30. Another Pro-D day that had been set for Feb. 10 is now Feb. 14, to give families a four-day weekend over the Family Day long weekend.
As well, the district is moving a student-led conference with teachers and parents from Nov. 1 because it was felt Halloween, being the day before, provided too much of a distraction. The sentiment is that students need to be in session and attentive the day before the conferences, which are similar to parent-teacher interviews but with students guiding the discussions.
“Halloween is so disruptive to that,” Morrow said. “It tends to be a difficult day in terms of concentration.”
The student-led conferences will now be moved to Nov. 21. In step with this change, a Pro-D Day day slated for Nov. 29 will be moved up to Nov. 1.
The district is also moving another student-led conference later, from March 5 to April 21, because it was felt that, with the district being on the semester system, the early March date was coming too soon into the new semester.
In the future, Morrow said the district will look at building three-year calendars, starting at the level of the district’s calendar committee, in order to help staff, administrators and families make plans for the long term. This will also allow for more discussion about making structural changes such as the two-week spring break.
“They can plan long term instead of year by year,” Morrow said.
Following the discussion, the board passed a motion to approve the final school calendar to send to the ministry. The calendar is available on the district website.