Blog #9
Dec. 18, 2018 – We Need You
When should the school year start?
Sheridan School District 2 is in the process of gathering
community feedback about the idea of starting our school year in the middle of
August, instead of very early in the month.
That would mean we
would more closely follow the school-year calendars used by our school district
neighbors, such as Jeffco and Denver.
To that end, I want to alert parents and community members
to a survey about this proposal. Please follow this link.
The survey won’t take you long to complete. There are six brief questions and a place to leave additional comments. The survey is available in both English and Spanish.
Moving the start date of the school year calendar by a week
or two, we realize, means adjustments and planning for families and all
district employees.
District staff won’t ask the Board of Education to make this change until we feel as if we have gathered all the feedback we can—from students, teachers, and staff as well. Your input is invaluable. I really hope you can take a few minutes to give us your thoughts.
Many years ago, Sheridan tried a starting the school year in
the first week of August. The idea was to shorten the summer break. This year,
for instance, we started on Aug. 2.
The idea of a shorter summer break is a noble and worthy
effort. To shorten the summer break, however, a fall break was added and the
spring break was expanded from one week to two. Essentially, the same number of
school days were distributed in a different way.
The idea was to reduce the amount of time that students were away from school in the summer and to minimize the so-called brain drain. Some studies reported that it takes many weeks of school to bring students back up to speed in the subjects being taught. However, the longer spring break and fall break meant that teachers needed to re-orient students to school routines and norms several times a year; there were mini “brain drains” all year long.
No calendar, unfortunately, is perfect. If you stop and think about it, it’s a little strange in this day and age that we even start in August. In the old days, it was early September. Then more and more districts shifted to middle of August. It’s all based on the needs of a long-ago age, when children were needed on the farms when the days were long and there were crops in the field. It’s kind of strange, isn’t it?
For now, this is a simple, but important, question. When
should we start the school year?
To answer this question, we need your help!
Thanks in advance for taking the time to complete the
survey.