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Dr. David Hopson |
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February 1, 2008 “Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save”—this quote by Will Rogers may be apropos to the issue of Gateway’s school calendar. While we are currently developing a school calendar for the 2008-2009 school year, we also have some changes and potential changes for the remainder of this school year. Our school calendars are put together under several restrictions. Two of the largest restrictions that we face are from the state (we must complete 180 days of school before July 1st) and the teachers’ association (we cannot have teachers start the school year before September 1st without their permission). From this starting point you add in the legal holidays, potential school vacations, parent conference days, teacher preparation and professional development days, anticipated snow days (five) and then try and determine how the district will meet all of the testing day requirements for MCAS. We try to save summer vacation in August by spending it in June the next year or, as is possible this year, missing enough snow days so that April vacation will need to be shortened. The decision has already been made, and shared with staff, that for each snow day we use beyond the five snow days built into the calendar we will take a day off the end of April vacation. Thus if we use a sixth snow day, students and staff will be expected to come to school on Friday, April 25th, a seventh snow day will be made up on Thursday, April 26th and so on. We also provide time for staff development on early release days for students and we missed our December day due to snow. Therefore the school committee has allowed us to set a new early release day to make up for the one that was missed. This ‘new’ early release day will be June 10th for all students in the Gateway district. The other changes that have been approved are changing the early release day of May 20th to May 6th, and changing the parent teacher conferences scheduled for March 24th to March 20th. These changes were made to accommodate MCAS testing. We are also requesting of the school committee 2-hour late start days for high school students not taking MCAS tests this year on March 25th, 26th, and 27th and May 21st and 22nd. High school students who will be taking the MCAS tests would come to school at the regular time and those not taking the MCAS tests would come to school two hours later. Busses will do a special run for those high school students who are not testing. This is, as you might have surmised, due to the accommodations we must make to administer MCAS tests in a manner that meets the state’s very stringent requirements. I understand that these changes make life more difficult for parents but I hope everyone understands that when changes occur due to the weather or state requirements we must adapt the calendar to make the best of the situation. We always try and get this information out as soon as possible to alleviate the difficulties and continue to try and hone our abilities at drafting a calendar that requires the fewest changes possible.
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