Calendar Committee seeks approval for 2015-16 calendar
Every year the calendar committee for Stillwater Area School District comes together to discuss and recommend a new calendar for the coming school year. The committee is made up of district employees and parents. The Calendar Committee is working to finalize a calendar for the 2015-2016 school year and wants feedback from the community. The committee has developed two proposed calendars which are designed with the learning needs of students in mind.
We look at how to schedule semester classes and plug in the state’s testing schedule. There is a host of issues to help plan a positive school year for students and parents.
— Tom Nelson
Option one proposes to start school on Aug 31 and end on June 3. Students would attend school for 170 days in this calendar. The calendar was designed with more professional development time for staff built in throughout the year. Option two is a more traditional calendar. School would start on Aug. 31 and end on June 7. Students would be in school for 173 days, which is the same as the current school year.
The calendar attempts to give everyone an opportunity to plan ahead. They see when vacations or trips can be planned.
The final recommendation will never make everyone happy.
Nelson explained , “We all like to plan and use our time differently. We may want to start after Labor Day and go later into June. We may want to start before Labor Day and get out earlier in the spring. We all do not use our holidays the same. We always have as many different concerns and we have people involved.”
Loading ...The School Board makes the final decision.
Junior high principal Mr. Ochocki said, “Being on the calendar committee is an exercise in patience.
Being a part of the committee takes up a lot of time and dedication.
Nelson explained, “ The school Board will have all the comments from those who post on the web. They review the comments and make the final decision. The calendar is presented at two Board meetings. It is not adopted at the first meeting allowing everyone to comment. It is voted on at the 2nd meeting. The Board has the right to make changes from the committee’s recommendation.”
The new 2015-2016 school year calendar idea was proposed to the School Board on Feb. 27 and will be voted on in April.
Jordan Fulin is a senior at SAHS. Other than newspaper she is also a part of Students for Social Justice Club and is a member of the Speech team. In her...
Andy Bjerk • Apr 1, 2015 at 12:12 am
This was really interesting to read! It was awesome to be able to hear about both of the calender options. All the info in this article was presented very nicely. Good job Jordan!
Calli Clay • Mar 31, 2015 at 10:35 pm
This article did a great job of explaining everything that is going on and discussing both of the sides.
Adam Sutcliffe • Mar 31, 2015 at 4:01 pm
I thought this article did a great job discussing the two separate sides of the discussion around next school year. It also did a very good job off remaining unbiased in the discussion
Amelia Schneider • Mar 30, 2015 at 5:24 pm
It’s always interesting to hear about what’s going to happen in the future for our district, so that’s why I picked this article. It was interesting to see the two sides of the decision, and that school may start before Labor Day! The way facts were presented in this article were very thoughtful and it was a great article to read.
Samantha Flipp • Feb 18, 2015 at 8:24 am
The lead and nutgraph provide a lot of helpful and informative details. It’s good to inform students and the community about things like this. Very well written!
Megan Aller • Feb 17, 2015 at 6:15 pm
This is such a huge discussion around the school and I think Jordan did a great job at writing this article. I did not know that there were still two options.