District Mulls 2012-2013 Calendar

In 2013, graduation will be held on June 20—but the is still deciding the calendar for the rest of the 2012-2013 school year.

That’s because several Board members had questions about the calendar presented at the board’s Monday meeting. That calendar, which was the sixth draft of the document, had students beginning school Sept. 6, attending school Nov. 5 but being off the rest of the week, and being in school on the Monday after Easter and the Friday before Memorial Day. It includes two in-service days on Sept. 4 and 5, owing to an early Labor Day in 2012.

The calendar draft also provides just two snow days, according to Education Committee Chairman Judy Haas.

Setting the graduation date allows Project Graduation, which is not affiliated with the school district and does not receive school or township funds, to reserve a space for its all-night, drug-and-alcohol free celebration for the graduating class.

But it’s the November dates that continue to cause a problem for other board members. The worry is that school attendance will drop if students are only required to be in for a single day during the week.

“I can’t even see 80 percent attendance on Nov. 5,” Greg Gillette said. “We’ve had this week off like this for a number of years. This is sort-of entrenched now in the culture of parents and families.”

To complicate matters, contractual obligations for staff in-service days and the dates for holidays require the district to offer certain days as breaks. In addition, the Board of Education must balance releasing students before its buildings become too hot to occupy.

For Gillette and several other board members, having off on Nov. 5 and splitting the district’s prom day—set for May 17 on the preliminary calendar—into to two district-wide half-days on May 16 and 17. The calendar draft proposed the May 17 date as a full day without school for students, and an in-service day for staff.

 “This is a difficult year throughout the state, trying to figure out the calendar, because of how the holidays fall, ” Jennifer Haley, who is on the Education Committee, said. “That means that, when we were discussing the issue of prom day, which is May 17, just the correlation of putting together the fact that it’s such a small segment of the population, encompassing the whole district . . .I think, overall, to limit a disruption taking May 16 and 17 as half days and making those for in-service and taking back Nov. 5 is beneficial for the district.”

“One day that school week when everybody now knows that’s vacation time,” Chris Pulsifer said. “Everybody wants to go to Florida that week because it’s warm there, and they do that. Our attendance there is going to be, I suspect, very weak, and it doesn’t make sense from an educational perspective.

“You have kids who have just come off the weekend who are in for one day and then they’re out for six more,” he added. “The best teacher in the world is going to have a hard time making a difference on that one day.”

According to Haas, the May 17 day-off was inserted in part because of the reduction of one snow day, and allows the district to have another day to hold school if weather cancels school earlier in the year. The in-service days at the beginning of the school year accommodate both an early Labor Day and a teaching contract that stipulates teachers cannot be in school prior to Sept. 1. The contract also stipulates five in-service days per year, according to Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction Lisa Antunes.

“You can’t just talk about Nov. 5 or one day without looking at the entirety of what you’re doing here,” Haas said. “It’s a trade-off.  . .You can’t really do anything about how the holidays fall this year.”

The issue with opening the schools on Election Day comes down to security, and the open-door access needed to run the polls.

Jodi Morrison, a township resident who works at , said the November problem could be remedied by moving the elections or by providing a police officer at the schools.

“I’ve been coming to these board meetings for quite a few years, and we always come to the same discussion during the calendar discussion, and it’s November,” Morrison said. “It’s a very simple solution. You need to get the elections out of the schools and therefore we can then open the schools Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Or, we need to get police presence in the schools. If we have police presence, we can have the schools open because we can have a police officer sitting there, monitoring what’s happening throughout the day.”

Board members accepted the last day of school unanimously. The Education Committee will analyze the calendar and present any modifications at a future meeting.