South Cook News

The District 96 Board of Education discussed establishing its 2023-24 academic calendar during its Jan. 18 meeting.

Director of Teaching and Learning Angela Dolezal presented the calendar's outline to the board. She told the board that one of the district's biggest priorities was designing its school year calendars so that the winter and spring breaks aligned with those of the Riverside High School District, allowing families who have students in both districts to have one set of breaks with all family members off instead of having them worry about differing schedules.

"One of the things that the team of teachers brought up was that they actually would like to see conferences earlier than the end of the trimester, than that November time," Dolezal said. "And so we did have a discussion around the possibility of moving conferences to mid-October, which is when Riverside Brookfield High School also has their conferences. But through a few conversations, not just with the team but with other stakeholders as well, what we have determined is that we do want to recommend the traditional calendar that you have in the board packet, but we want to take this upcoming year and the upcoming school year, the 23-24 school year, to have serious conversations with stakeholders, including board members [from the Education Planning Committee], [so we can] bring back to the board as a recommendation, possibly with the RDC leadership, with the district leadership, we want to have conversations with staff members around 'What would conferences in mid-October look like? What's the purpose of conferences in mid-October?' and make sure we're all on the same page before we make that recommendation."

The proposed calendar has classes start on Aug. 23 and end on May 31, 2024. The district would mark the entirety of Thanksgiving week off as a holiday break, and winter break would start after school on Dec. 22, with students returning on Jan. 8. Spring break would run from March 25 through April 1. District 96 would also mark Labor Day, Columbus Day, MLK Day, Presidents Day, and Memorial Day as holidays, and institute days, or professional development days, will take place during the two days before students start in August, Oct. 10 (one day after Columbus Day), and Feb. 16 (one day after MLK Day).

The board was in favor of the proposed calendar, as well as the possibility of altering the dates of parent-teacher conferences in the 2024-25 school year. They also asked about the second half-day that the district had discussed, but because the district had not yet held its half-day instructional day for teachers, the board is still waiting to decide on adding another one until they know whether or not it will be beneficial.