Principal Jordan Beel detailed how the decisions are made for the school calendar, more specifically breaks. The teacher’s union negotiation team and district negotiation team are the main decision makers for pretty much everything school related, led by Anne Armstrong, the assistant superintendent, and Micheal Anderson, an English teacher at the school.

Armstrong negotiates the contract with the teacher’s union, including start times for teachers, due to teacher’s having to start professional development before students even begin the school year. Other school districts are also a huge consideration – when do they start, when should we start, when do they end, etc. “We look at neighboring districts and we try to match things up,” said Beel.

There are some things, however, that the school has that other districts don’t. Namely, there are the two days off after the SuperBowl as a Mid-Winter Break. Most schools don’t have this break, or they have it at a different point in the year. Beel said that it was something put in place before he was around, and most teachers like it, so it’s staying.

Teaching staff and the community are often surveyed about which days they like having off or don't like having off, and the responses impact the schedule for the next year based on which days are widely liked and disliked.

All decisions end up being decided by the chief negotiator, Anderson, for the teachers union and central office team. He is the one who makes the school calendar, determining the length of the breaks, when they occur, and all school events.

The committees and unions aren’t the only ones who have a say. The state has a certain amount of hours that public schools are required to include in their year. There’s supposed to be a total of 1098 instructional hours or a total of 180 days. If these hours aren’t met, schools have to either remove days off or add extra days at the end of the year.

Because of this, schools are allotted a certain amount of snow days that can be used per year. The schools are allowed six snow days per school year. If more were needed, the district would begin to remove days from things like breaks or days off. Only in extreme cases would the school need to begin adding school days.

Other schools choose to shorten the amount of days they go, but make the amount of hours in the school days longer. The current schedule starts the day at 7:50am and ends at 2:45pm, a total of six hours and fifty-five minutes. If they chose to instead end the day at 3pm or 3:30pm, there would end up being less required days. This would save schools both money and time.

There is a lot that goes into the decision making process of the school calendar, with many different factors determining when, how long, and how often we have breaks.