Chairman says calendar is traditional except for start date

The Albert Lea School Board will vote Tuesday on a new calendar for 2015-16 released Thursday.

The newest calendar is a traditional calendar, according to Chairman Mark Ciota. The proposed calendar has the first day of school on Aug. 24 and last day of school on May 19, 2016.

While there are two bills still in Minnesota House committees that would allow schools to start before Labor Day, Ciota said the school can file for an exemption through the Minnesota Department of Education.

Ciota said 59 schools have waivers to start early this year with no educational ties to them — essentially, the schools asked for waivers to start before Labor Day just to get an early start.

Ciota also said the school can file for an exemption if it is working on a project that costs over $400,000. The school is working on a $2 million project with the heating and air conditioning at Lakeview Elementary School, so Ciota said they could use that for an exemption.

The calendar was discussed Thursday morning by the administration and was given to the calendar committee — made up of the unions in the school district — in the afternoon.

After the calendar was completed, it was immediately sent to the board.

The board will be voting on Tuesday, Ciota said.

“We don’t have a calendar for next year, so we need to vote on a calendar so people can make plans,” Ciota said.

The meeting on Tuesday will be a regular school board meeting with an open forum before the meeting.

Ciota said the biggest complaint he heard during the hearings on the original proposed calendar was the students needed more instruction, not less. The original proposed calendar had about 160 to 165 days of instruction, and the new calendar has around 171 days of instruction, Ciota said.

Another thing Ciota said he heard from the original proposed calendar hearings was the idea that ending the first semester before winter break would be ideal, especially for students that presently take finals right after coming back from a break.

“We can’t start Sept. 8 and get that done,” Ciota said.

Ciota said the goals with this calendar are twofold. First is to have the first semester end before the winter break and second is to keep school from going into mid-June.

Spring break in the proposed calendar will be March 14 to 18, 2016. As far as Ciota knew, the week of spring break fluctuates and this week was chosen because it is the end of a quarter.

While students do not get Good Friday off in the calendar, Ciota said he lobbied for that day to be off. He said the committee wanted the students to have as many five-day school weeks as possible, so students had a pattern to follow.

Ciota said the biggest issue is the students will have 81 days of instruction before winter break and 90 days of instruction after winter break. He said it’s a bit of an issue to have uneven semesters, but he is confident teachers will use those days well.

“I’m confident in our teaching staff that they will make those days valuable to our students,” Ciota said.

The school board meeting begins at 5 p.m. Tuesday at Brookside Education Center.