Building a Calendar
March 9, 2011 - Creating the instructional calendar for the school system is much more complicated than you would imagine. School administrators work to build an instructional calendar that conforms to state law, school system policy and family needs.
Building a Calendar Click here for the video Building a Calendar |
 Discussing the calendar at Durant Road Elementary |
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Parents' Concerns
Parents have a variety of concerns when it comes to the calendar. Parent Kris Ramsundar says family time is important.
“That’s what we counted on when we were ready to go somewhere; our kids would go with us. That’s what we count on in having the traditional calendar,” said Ramsundar. “The instructional time and the amount of time that we have together as a family, because family is very important for us.”
Parent Gary Lewis likes the way early release days have recently been scheduled on Fridays.
“This past year, we’ve enjoyed having those early release days be on Fridays,” said Lewis. “In the past, they have been on different days. And what we find is if they are on a day other than a Friday, then we don’t feel that we get the full benefit out of it. And so having an early release day on a Friday makes it nice and it gives us that extended weekend that we can spend with our families.”
Lewis likes the three day break at Thanksgiving with students having the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off as well as Friday. He says it gives his family a fall break.
Parent Veronica Clark likes the extended summer breaks that give her family a chance to visit extended family in other parts of the world.
“We do like to have a little bit more than a three-week period to go visiting and everything,” said Clark. “That also helps to develop the home language, or the second language for our children which is the case right now. It is when we visit that we provide them the opportunity for immersion. So three weeks sometimes is too short. The whole summer period is much more adequate.”
Calendar Law and Policy
State statute 115C-84.2 and School Board Policy 5030 set the calendar parameters. The calendar must have 180 days and 1,000 hours for instruction. The first day may not be earlier than August 25, and the final day many not be later than June 10.
School administrators convene a calendar committee to discuss calendar issues and feedback in developing the traditional calendar. The committee includes a mix of parents, community members, school administrators and teachers who meet for a half day to review the calendar.
Cary High Principal Doug Thilman was surprised by the complexity of issues that go into building the calendar when he first began serving on the calendar committee.
“The first year I served on the committee, I didn’t really have a good knowledge of how difficult that process was going to be,” said Thilman. “And there was definitely respect for all the individuals that served on the committee, what they brought to the table and the process to go through that I think is an excellent one.”
Creating Semesters and Quarters
The school year is divided into semesters and state law requires grading periods of approximately nine weeks, with time for parent-teacher conferences and grade reporting. Most WCPSS high schools are on block schedules offering semester long courses.
“One of the big issues we try to look at is to make sure that our two semesters are equal in number of days,” said Thilman. “And when you factor in weather, make up days and holidays, that makes it challenging. But when we’re looking at 180, we really need to try to stick as close to 90 and 90 as we possibly can for the balance in terms of the semesters for high schools.
Aversboro Elementary Principal Paul Domenico served on the calendar committee this year.
“The hardest part about the calendar was at the half-way point of the school year because you’ve got Thanksgiving break and winter break and then you have the 90 days that fall right around Martin Luther King Day, that three-day weekend,” said Domenico. “So trying to have 90 days perfectly set up and then having those breaks, it was hard to work around.”
Domenico said balanced semesters and quarters are also important in elementary schools.
“You do want to make sure you have that balance when we talk about the first quarter, because we’re also talking about decisions for kids that are meeting benchmark at the end of each quarter,” said Domenico. “The CMAPP has the calendar set up over a 180 day calendar so if we end the quarter a few days early, that’s not going to align with the curriculum calendar set up for elementary school teachers. So we did keep that in mind, too.”
Pre-K teacher Beth Levine of Douglas Magnet Elementary served on the calendar committee this year. Levine said it was important to provide teachers the full five days a week to instruct students.
“When we looked at the calendar, we actually noticed that there were a fair number of weeks around the holidays where there was some sort of vacation day, teacher workday or something, so our group did try to look at minimizing the number of consecutive weeks that had a day off for one reason or another,” said Levine. “We wanted to maximize instructional time by not having too many missed days in consecutive weeks or within a month.”
Meeting Families' Needs
In building the calendar, the school system seeks to meet the needs for instruction while addressing the needs of families.
“The first thing is knowing that our main focus was to meet student needs from the instructional standpoint, and then we also really tried to focus in on making sure that some of the different components of the calendar meet family needs for those important times like spring break, winter break and the Thanksgiving holiday,” said Domenico. “We tried to take all that into consideration, and we really tried to make sure we met the needs of what would make sense for students from the learning standpoint and from the family needs, too.”
“Probably the biggest thing is being aware of busy times for families, whether it be leading up to a holiday, leading up to a spring break-type scenario where we want to be sure that we still maximize instruction, but are aware that the days leading up to spring break are important instructional days, sometimes less attended days for our students in terms of planning for family vacations and family trips and those types things,” said Thilman. “We need to be sensitive and aware of what families are dealing with, too.”
There are 11 paid holidays. Veterans Day is required by state law. The calendar committee also takes note of Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Presidents Day, Election Day and other days important to families.
“I am Jewish,” said Levine. “I was certainly interested in seeing if it was possible to make Yom Kippur either a vacation day or a teacher workday. Given the state law that was very hard to do, and the group that I was in actually was not able to do that.”
Levine said she would like to have seen spring break scheduled in the week of Passover and Good Friday.
“I think the biggest thing is to be sensitive to the members of our community, and then within the framework of that, be able to still have school on as many days as possible,” said Thilman. “We need to be open to the ideas of honoring different holidays, but also finding a way to make sure that there is consistency in our school week.”
Teacher Workdays
There are five teacher workdays with mandated scheduling and nine teacher workdays that are scheduled by the school district. Domenico said it was important to have sufficient work days at the start and end of the year and then have other workdays across the calendar.
“The other workdays we did try to spread them out throughout the year,” said Domenico. “Number one in case we wanted to have a staff development on a workday. The work days are typically used for inclement weather make up days, and we don’t want to put them all in one spot.”
Levine said teacher workdays on Fridays are a particular concern for preschool special education teachers.
“Our children do not come on Fridays,” said Levine. “We meet the needs of students and families on Fridays when we visit homes and visit day cares and do a variety of things. When a teacher workday falls on a Friday, we still wind up having to do the things we would do on that Friday if it wasn’t a teacher workday - so in essence, if a teacher workday is on a Friday, we miss out on that workday.”
Elections and Schools
In 2012, there will be a presidential election on November 6, an event that brings many visitors to schools that serve as polling sites. Domenico said Aversboro Elementary is a poll site.
“There’s a lot of traffic in here,” said Domenico. “And that brings up a safety concern when you have a lot of people that come into your building. They don’t have to sign in. They just come into your building, and there will be a lot of people in there, plus the heavy times for voting are before work and after work. And for us, that’s going to coincide with when our kids come to school, so there’s just going to be a lot of traffic here at one time.”
Levine said Douglas Magnet Elementary also serves as a polling site.
“I feel like there are security issues when you have a lot of people from the public coming on and off campus basically unsupervised,” said Levine. “There are also tremendous parking issues because parking is in the same lot where our buses and our cabs come in and out. Since so many schools are polling sites, I do think it should be a day off for safety concerns. I think there are safety and security issues.”
Domenico said the Election Day issue was discussed in the calendar committee meeting.
“We did talk about making it a work day or a vacation day, so we didn’t have school that day,” said Domenico. “But then once we made the rest of the calendar, we had to make some adjustments there. One of the things we talked about as a proposal was maybe even making that a two hour delayed start, because we wouldn’t have that logistical concern of having all the people coming to vote with all the kids coming to school at the same time when they would both be using our car pool lane.”
School administrators use the calendar committee feedback to draft a calendar that will be taken to the Board of Education that reviews it and approves it. The calendars are built two years out, so families have plenty of time to prepare.
You can find calendars on the school system website at www.wcpss.net/calendars
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