Starting school before Labor Day?

Depending on which of two proposed calendars the Board of Education approves, kids in Rockville Centre could be starting the 2015-16 school year before Labor Day.

At the Board of Education’s request, the district administration created two possible calendars for the next school year: one has classes beginning on Sept. 1 (six days before Labor Day, which is Sept. 7), and the other has class start on Sept. 8.

The board has been discussing the calendars since December. Over the last few weeks, the PTA sent the drafts to its members at the board’s request to solicit feedback. Preferences from PTA members were split nearly evenly between the two calendars.

“The challenge is always to make sure you have an adequate number of instructional days to achieve everything you want in the curriculum,” said Superintendent Dr. William Johnson. “We always have to, for example, find out when the [International Baccalaureate] and Regents exams are going to be held. We have to make sure the days we have available to us make sure we achieve everything we want and we have time to get prepared.”

Many of the PTA respondents who were against the Sept. 1 start date said it was too early in the year and would cut summer too short. Every decade or so, holidays line up in such a way that school starts before Labor Day, which many people take to be the unofficial end of summer. This school year, Labor Day fell early (on Sept. 1), and students were back in class on Sept. 3.

The administration had many unique challenges to address when putting together the 2015-16 calendar. In addition to the later-than-usual Labor Day, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur fall in the middle of the week in September. Passover and Easter, which are usually close together, are a month apart in 2016.

The main differences between the two calendars, other than the start dates, are when spring vacations fall. The first calendar gives students off for five days for Easter, while the second only gives a three-day weekend. The first calendar also gives six days off for the Passover/Spring break, while the second calendar has three days split over two weeks.

“You always try to make sure you don’t frontload your vacations, because that leaves you with a dilemma at the end of the year that’s impossible to resolve [if you have used snow days],” Johnson said. “We always try to make a vacation in March or April in case you need to pull from those days [to make up for lost days].”

The Board of Education is looking for more public comment on the calendars at its meeting on Jan. 21, which will be held at 7:30 p.m. in room 112 at South Side High School. It is possible the board will make its decision on the calendar at that meeting. Drafts of the proposed calendars are available on the district’s website.