The board may approve the final calendar at its Jan. 27 meeting.
The proposed calendar begins on Aug. 17 and ends May 26.
District surveys and listening sessions gathered community feedback during the calendar planning process. Surveys found common requests that the calendar start one week later, align with other Central Texas school districts’ calendars, provide a fall break, add full days for staff development and teacher planning, and end school by Memorial Day, among others.
Chief Academic Officer Matt Bentz said while parents, campus leaders and community members preferred full days off rather than early release days, teachers preferred the early release days meant for planning time. Teachers’ main request in a district survey was to have planning time built into the school calendar.
Bentz said the proposed calendar aims to be a compromise between the two options.
The proposed calendar includes two dedicated teacher workdays before school starts, two days for the Continuous Improvement Conference in October, two early release days and added staff development days during the school year.
Student holidays, in addition to regular holidays, include Sept. 26, Oct. 10-11, Nov. 8, Feb. 20 and March 20. Early release days would be Dec. 16 and May 26, which are before winter break and the last day of school, respectively.
The calendar does not include a bad weather day because it has enough banked—or extra instructional—minutes already in the calendar as to not require a bad weather day, Bentz said.
Board members said they would also like to see a planning day in April so there is time for planning toward the end of the school year. Bentz said this could be added using the banked minutes over the required number of instructional minutes.
Board Member Anna Smith said it is important to guarantee teachers the two dedicated work days before school begins as principals would decide which two days before school begins are dedicated to teacher planning.
“I’m just really worried about our educators and making sure they get that planning time,” Smith said. “Because we all know how important that planning time in that classroom is for them.”
Bentz said he can make an effort to mark two days on the calendar for all teachers to have dedicated planning, but it needs to be decided if the days should be the same for all teachers.
“We would trust our principals to do it and we would also have a system in place to verify that it is happening for our teachers,” Bentz said.
