The Atlantic Community School District’s Board of Education discussed but took no action on, the 2018-19 School Calendar. The discussion was held during the Board’s regular monthly meeting, Wednesday evening, at the High School. Superintendent Steve Barber said a committee was formed and two calendars were provided to staff in each of the District’s buildings, for feedback. Barber said there were some challenges, given that the first allowable start date is Aug. 23rd, 2018, the final day for school using the current calendar would be the Friday before Memorial Day. 20 instructional hours were missed on the current calendar to date, due the weather, with total being 1,073. This year, the district will add the 25th as a student day, and other small tweaks to the calendar to meet the requirement. Any additional weather delays will result in the make-up of additional instructional hours.The 2018-19 School Calendar would be different from 2017-18, in that First Semester will have students in school on Dec. 21st. Last year, they did not have school on the Friday before break.

The committee thought having Martin Luther King as a professional development day, was too close to the extended break. They agreed President’s Day would be a better time for Professional Development. The committee calendar discussion also included moving spring conferences to later in the school year, or make sure the P/T Conference is the only activity on two evenings. District staff were split 50-50 with regard to changing the week-long break to an extended break around the time of Easter. By doing that, officials say they were able to increase the number of instructional hours in the schedule to create more flexibility with the hours.

School Board member Kristy Pellett said she was asked recently, “What communication happened with the pre-schools in town, in terms of having the calendars coincide somewhat concurrently with their calendars. Board President Alison Bruckner said the preschools “They just usually tie to our calendar. The biggest impact that they usually do, is conferences. Superintendent Barber acknowledged he had not reached out to the YMCA or Little Lambs. He said “I didn’t have a conversation with either of those.” Pellett said the concerns were related more to what was going on this year, with schedules not being aligned, that causes transportation issues and so on. Steve Barber said he will take the suggestions back to the committee and see if there are any tweaks that can be made. He and Pellett both admitted, there’s no way to make everyone happy. Pellett said it would be nice to have consistency year-to-year, when possible. A Public Hearing on the 2018-19 School Calendar will be held during the Board’s regular meeting on April 11^th.

In other business, the Board approved Resolutions pertaining to: the 2018-19 Budget Guarantee, in the amount of $217,766; A PPEL (Physical Plant and Equipment Levy) in the amount of $152,452, or .33-cents per thousand dollars assessed valuation, and, a 2018-19 Fund Transfer of $8,000, from General to Activity, for Protective Equipment.