Herd Article 12-18-2013

The holiday season is such an exciting time for so many people. Regardless of one’s faith it is a time of year that brings people together to share happy thoughts, gifts, cards, and in many cases to share of one’s substance to one another. It has been a pleasure to visit each of the building’s concerts and see the pride of the parents and students as our excellently prepared kids performed. I never imagined I would have the opportunity to see so many holiday programs in one year. I want to take a moment and thank each of you for your efforts in assisting or supporting those individuals who have worked to help our students be ready for their performances. To those that planned, prepared, and pulled some hair out getting ready for the performances, kudos to each of you…. Job well done!

The board recently approved the 2014-2015 school year calendar. You can review the summary page the details of the calendar are on the next page. Taking general input from the staff surveys and from administration there have been some adjustments to the calendar. Below is a summary of the changes along with the rationale:

1. Prior to the start of school there will now be just two required days for all instructional staff. One Inservice day Monday August 25th and one work day on August 26th.  You are always more than welcome to get into your classes sooner or later than those dates. This will allow us to have an additional inservice/workday during the school year, and avoid conflicts with the county fair.
2. Wednesday August 27th will be an inservice for staff on scheduled to be evaluated in 2014-2015 (approximately ⅓ of you). With the new evaluation system (Teacher Effectiveness Model) starting, we want to make sure that  everyone slated for the first group, gets an adequate orientation and training. I do not see this requiring a full day, but no promises at this time. We plan to hold this training each year for those in the evaluation cycle.
3. Note that on the calendar listing, days in italics indicate that the training may not require all staff. Such is the case with the new teacher orientation and teacher evaluation training. Compensation for days such as this is to be determined (TBD). I wish I could give you more details as it relates to compensation, but we’ll need to address that at a later date. Unfortunately, the calendar was due before those details have been solidified.
4. You’ll notice an inservice day on October 3rd. There are several additional days built into the year, non-italicized days are for all instructional staff. Italicized days, as detailed above are TBD.  We want time built in for ongoing training, collaboration and data analysis. We did not select ½ days or early release days for the training model because they reduce instructional time, are inefficient from a staffing/operation standpoint, and it is hard to focus on a training when you have just spent ½ the day with kids, or you are about to spend ½ the day with kids. I invision most of these days being ½ inservice ½ work/collaboration time.
5. October 24th we added a fall break. Feedback received was that it was too long of a stretch to go from the first of September until Thanksgiving without a break.
6. Wednesday before Thanksgiving is a scheduled ½ day staff inservice. We wanted the ongoing inservice time as well as provide parents and staff the opportunity to start their potential Thanksgiving travels sooner.
7. Winter break is a full two weeks.
8. Spring break starts march 30th and encompasses Good Friday. We did not want to take a week off, come back and then take another day off the following week. Most of our conference districts are following this same spring break schedule.
9. Last day with students is June 12th. This is a week later than in previous years. Due to the additional inservice days during the year, the October break, and two full weeks in December.
10. June 15th Last day for staff. We felt it was important to have a day to debrief the year, and finalize plans for the coming year.

There were many additional ideas and suggestions that were not incorporated. If yours was one of those. I am sorry. Know that your input was not ignored, and future calendars very well may reflect some of those ideas.

Happy Holidays to All!