D86 Calendar: Next School Year to Start on a Friday

The first days of the District 86 school year will go differently this August than they have in years’ past.

The District 86 Board of Education approved by a 6-1 vote Monday a 2013-14 calendar that schedules freshman orientation on a Tuesday and the first full instructional day the following Friday in order to preserve the orientation day while keeping semesters balanced and complying with a new state statute.

According to next year’s calendar, which got the support of all board members except Richard Skoda, freshmen will come in for orientation on the morning of Tuesday, Aug. 20. Two teacher institute days will then take place on Aug. 21 and Aug. 22, before the entire student body comes in for the first full day of instruction on Friday, Aug. 23.

Historically, Superintendent Nick Wahl said, District 86 has held the freshman orientation during the morning hours of the first instructional day, with sophomores, juniors and seniors attending in the afternoon. A new state statute, however, mandates that the first and last days of every district's school year must include five consecutive hours of instruction for all students, meaning the old first-day model cannot be continued.

“It’s not ideal by any means,” board member Jennifer Planson said of next year's calendar. “But I think it’s … worth trying for a year and see how it goes.”

Wahl said it was important to the group of teachers, administrators and board members that developed the calendar that the freshman orientation be preserved. Wahl said the idea to hold orientation on Thursday, sandwiching it between institute days on Tuesday and Wednesday and Friday’s first full day, was not favored by teacher representatives who felt it had the effect of adding a work day despite the fact that no teachers, especially those that don’t teach freshmen, are contractually obligated to attend orientation.

Skoda dismissed the teachers’ opposition to putting orientation between the institute days and the first full day and said he opposed starting the year on a Friday. The board member suggested holding the institute days on Thursday and Friday, then holding the freshman orientation the following Monday, Aug. 26, and the first full day Tuesday, Aug. 27.

“I think most of the teachers that didn’t have freshman would welcome having that free time,” Skoda said, referring to Monday.

Wahl said moving the first day to Tuesday and tacking on days at the end of the year would result in imbalanced semesters.

“The driving force is to try to balance the semesters,” Wahl said. “[The approved calendar] does that.”

Skoda said changing holiday attendance is one way to offset the imbalance.

“There are ways to balance without getting rid of freshman orientation and without starting on a Friday,” he said.

Board members Dianne Barrett, Dennis Brennan, Kay Gallo, DeeDee Gorgol, Michael Kuhn and Planson all voted to approve the calendar item, which also included tentative calendars for 2014-15 and 2015-16.

Next year’s calendar might not be “the right calendar,” Wahl said, but it does allow teachers to get all of their first-day introduction material out of the way on Friday, then kick off normal instruction with a full week beginning Monday.

Wahl wants to put together a calendar task force this year that includes parents and possibly students, along with administrators, faculty and staff to determine the best approach to future calendars.

The superintendent said discussions in recent years, including one last year to move first-semester finals to before winter break (which is not realized in next year’s calendar), have given him the impression the calendar issue is an important one to District 86 families.

“We’re trying to represent instructional time while also balancing community interest,” Wahl said. “Why not bring those parties together to discuss this?”

Winter break in 2013-14 will take place the weeks of Dec. 23-27 and Dec. 30-Jan. 3. Spring break will take place the week of March 31 to April 4. 

See the full 2013-14 calendar here on the District 86 website.

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