At first glance, the 2024-25 academic calendar looks a lot like recent school-year calendars: Students start school in August, enjoy a break during the holidays, and end school in May. However, there are some changes in the calendar for the next school year.
The Board of Education approved next year’s calendar at their regular meeting on Dec. 13.
“The biggest change for our families, and one that our parents have been asking for, is that we will return to the traditional snow day without required online instructional time for students,” said Superintendent Dr. Fara Jones. “Further, we have added enough time into the calendar over the last three years that our students will not have to make up snow days during the next school year, which reflects a second change that our parents have been asking for: a calendar with no surprises.”
(It’s important to note that AMI will continue to be used for snow days the remainder of this school year.)
Dr. Jones said the district has been using virtual (online) Alternative Methods of Instruction, commonly referred to as AMI, since 2021 to attempt to reclaim missed instructional time due to inclement weather.
“AMI was the online or virtual plan that allowed schools to continue to operate during closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Dr. Jones explained. “It has always been the accepted idea that any type of instruction was better than none, so our district committed to using AMI on snow days, but we now believe online AMI has not been an effective way to deliver meaningful instruction on snow days. This online model does not help students retain information when school is closed on snow days, so teachers are still spending the next day back in class reviewing the information from before the snow day.
“Another factor that weighed heavily in the calendar committee’s decision to eliminate AMI for snow days is that it causes a hardship for many families because parents may have to take off work to help their child navigate and complete the online assignments. Our parents have made it clear that they prefer snow days with no online assignments. Many parents have expressed that children should enjoy snow days as we did when we were kids, and we’re able to provide that in the coming year.”
Dr. Jones said that information from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and an audit of the district’s instructional minutes allows 10 “snow days” to be built into the calendar without the need for students to make up those days. “DESE no longer requires snow days to be made up in districts like ours that have ample instructional minutes built into the calendar,” she said. “Making up instructional time at schools can be confusing. Most of us think of school in terms of days, but the state measures it in minutes. Since the 2021-22 school year, when the district moved to the AMI plan and added minutes to the calendar, our students have been going to school many more minutes than the state requires.” Dr. Jones does not think that is a bad thing. “We want every minute with our students we can get, and we want every minute we have with them to count. We have heard our parents and looked at the impact on our instruction, and we feel that taking away holiday breaks and adding time to the end of the calendar doesn’t give us positive results.”
Out of precaution, the district will continue to file an AMI plan with the state, to use in the event of non-weather-related events just in case there would be a reason that the school would need to close for an extended time.
Dr. Jones advised that students should be aware that they won’t get out of school early if we don’t have any snow days. “Remember how I said that we want every minute with our students that we can get?” Dr. Jones said. “We will not shorten the school calendar if we don’t miss any or only use a few snow days. We will utilize every available instructional minute, thus creating a calendar for everyone that will not change.”
