Beginning Anew: 2023-2024 Calendar
March 15, 2023
One of the largest identifiers of an Adams 12 schedule are the wacky, early release Wednesdays. However, for the past year, the student, parent, and staff-led Adams 12 Calender Study Committee has strived for the optimal calendar, finalizing two options: Calendar A and Calendar B.
Calendar A keeps the calendar as currently used, starting on August 15 and ending on May 23, with Early Release Days for each week in this 170-day, 1,088-hour, 7:40-3:30 schedule. For younger students, elementary schools hold assessment days, where elementary classes are not in session.
In Calendar B, the number of days is shortened to 166, but high school students have more hours of school at 1,093 hours. Summer break also starts a week later beginning on May 30 and ending on August 14. Early Release Days are eliminated, and high school students scheduling from 7:40 to 3:10 every single day. Replacing these Wednesdays are Professional Learning Days for teachers, full-day teacher learning distributed throughout the year. All students do not have school these days. More breaks are added throughout the school year: week-long Fall break in mid-October; week-long Mid-winter break in February; spring break moved to the beginning of April. Staff can also receive more paid days in the school year.
Overall, Calendar A benefits (+) and disadvantages (-) high school students by…
+ Longer Summer break (+ 1 week)
+ Early Release Days (5 hr 20 min)
+ Shorter total hours (1,088 hr)
– More total days (170)
– Longer days (7:40am-3:30pm) (7 hr 50 min)
– Different break days across different grades
– No added breaks
– Less total break days (26 days (23 days for staff))
– Staff pay varies
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Calendar B benefits (+) and disadvantages (-) high school students by…
– Shorter Summer break (-1 week)
– No Early Release Days
– Longer total hours (1,093)
+ Less total days (166)
+ Shorter days (7:40am-3:10pm) (7hr 30 min)
+ (Mostly) Same break days across different grades
+ Added break (+10 days (+8 days for staff))
- Mid October: week long Fall break
- End February: week long Mid-Winter break
- Beginning April: week-long Spring break*
+ More total break days (43 days (32 days for staff))
+ Professional Learning Days (11 days)
– Staff pay increases
*Same amount of days, just moved from March
For more comparisons, Adams 12 provided a chart to contrast more of these stats across all grades.
Despite 61.6% overall support for Calendar A and 60.5% overall support for Calendar B seen in the survey results, the board decided on Calendar B on Tuesday, March 7. In his email, Superintendent Mr. Chris Gdowski reasoned that increased breaks will support student and staff attendance and system-wide alignment days will reduce inconsistencies and childcare burdens. Eliminating Early Release Wednesdays will provide convenient middle school start times, suitable preschool times/transportation, and most importantly, increased quality instructional time. There is currently not enough time to thoroughly cover all material, so this change will allow teachers to better pace instruction. Mr. Gdowski is confident that educators will do so without adding high-intensity and stressful work since Adams 12 is “…committed to preserving time for content review and catch up.”
See the new 2023-2024 calendar here.
