Just a quick reminder that all staff return to school on August 26th for staff opening day activities and that students return to school on August 30th for a full day of school. Opening day activities for staff consist of a number of required activities to fulfill obligations that the state has imposed on school systems, i.e., training in the evaluation process, blood based pathogens, use of EpiPens, bullying prevention, 504 and IEP protocols, and a series of other items such as ‘state ethics’ training. While the state mandates all of this training, most of these items fall under the ‘unfunded mandate’ category whereby the state doesn’t pay the district to have staff complete this training. I can barely imagine how much time (and the related costs) would be saved if many of these mandates would be eliminated, especially the ones regarding information that the state collects multiple times through multiple venues).
The students’ first day back will vary considerably depending on factors such as grade level and individual teachers. While there is always much of the routine paperwork and expectations to get through, everyone has a different way to do this while getting to know their new students and developing a classroom culture of success and high expectations. In any case, I look forward to the beginning of school and the return of student activities to the campus.
If you’ve taken a look at the school calendar you’ll have noticed that the last scheduled day of school is Friday, June 9th, the earliest in recent history. Of course that 180th day is predicted on having no school cancellations, hardly something one can count on here in the hilltowns. There have been some interesting developments in Massachusetts regarding snow cancellations with some schools having been granted permission to use ‘blizzard bags’ to eliminate having to make up snow days. From my understanding these are assignments designed by the teachers to enable students to continue to do school work on those days when school is cancelled due to inclement weather, thereby having those days ‘count’ towards the 180-day school attendance mandate. Given the amount of preparation done by both staff and students on any given day, it makes sense that this could be a solution for those days when it’s not safe to provide transportation to school and I’m pleased that the state is beginning to consider such alternatives to making up days at the end of the school year when everyone’s minds are certainly not fully engaged in the learning process given the increased sunshine and generally nice weather at the end of June.
You’ll also note that parent/teacher conference days have been changed as part of making the school year more advantageous to students, staff, and parents. This year we’ll be trying out having parent conferences in the afternoon and potentially evening after the students have spent a half-day in school. We hope this will continue to allow parents time to meet with teachers later in the day and at the beginning of the school year so that any changes in student support can be made in a timely fashion to impact the rest of the school year. We will be following the impact of this change as we look towards developing calendars for future years.
