The calendar has school starting on Aug. 15, which is the third week of the month. State law requires districts to start no earlier than the week containing the fourth Monday of August, but because LISD is a district of innovation, it can start school earlier than the fourth week.
The DOI concept gives independent school districts most of the flexibility available to Texas’ open-enrollment charter schools. Some of that flexibility includes being able to choose the first day of class, minutes of instruction per day, class-size ratios, and teacher certification and experience.
LISD became a DOI in May, so this is the first academic school year in which it has the power to choose the first day of class.
Prior to the academic calendar being approved, the district sent a survey to the community asking it to select one of four options for the calendar.
Option A and Option B have early start dates and have school ending prior to Memorial Day. Options C and D have school starting Aug. 27 and school ending June 6. The only difference between option C and D were professional learning days and student holidays. The winter break and spring break schedules were the same for all options.
Option A received 25.6 percent, and Option B received 50.4 percent. Option C gathered 11.6 percent, and Option D totaled 12.3 percent of the votes.
