Every year, parents flock to the websites of their local school districts to check the newly released school calendars. Start dates, holidays, breaks; all of these are checked and double checked as plans are made and schedules are set. The Plain Local School calendar, like any other school district, dictates how students and families spend their entire year. From vacation times to summer jobs, the shaping of thousands of lives resides largely in the small, public document, yet not many are informed as to how this vital calendar is crafted.
The process of drafting the district calendar falls largely on the Superintendent, Brent May. Every year May works to create a schedule that fits the needs of the students, faculty and teachers. Due to the collective bargaining of the local teachers union, many things are set in stone.
“The most important thing with this is that staff need to have 186 days in school. That is through their collective bargaining. And for students it works out anywhere between 174 and 176 days,” May said.
Beyond those requirements, much of the district calendar is flexible. There are, however, a few main objectives and dates that the calendar is forged around. Things like Holiday breaks and summer that hold a strong significance for families.
“There are a couple things I try to do. Spring break is usually the last full week in March, and I try to have school end prior to Memorial Day,” May said. “For Thanksgiving, I’ll do a Wednesday and a Monday, that gives everyone a nice long weekend. Christmas holiday usually works out to a week and a half to two weeks where people are off.”
Looking beyond the family, some GlenOak students have close relations with students from nearby districts while many others attend career tech classes at neighboring schools. Due to this, the Plain Local calendar typically looks similar to the calendars of North Canton, Jackson, Lake and others.
“There are some things we try to keep consistent with the other schools so that kids don’t have to follow three different schedules,” May said.
The district calendar also has to consider a balance between the many schools and grade levels that it encompasses. With six elementary schools, a middle school, an intermediate school and a high school, there is a lot to balance and consider. For example, lower grade levels often grade by 9-week segments as opposed to the semester reporting of the high school. This can affect decisions such as grading periods and breaks.
Jill Collett, the Plain Local Schools curriculum director, helps maintain communication and pacing throughout the many grade levels and needs found within the community.
I oversee curriculum and instruction for grades K-12. We also have a lot of curriculum coordinators who will work in specific areas,” Collet said. “It is kind of like a web system, making individual decisions and then we all come together.”
After all of these ever-shifting considerations are taken into account, a draft of the district calendar is made publicly available for comment and review to anyone in the community as per the State of Ohio requirements. After this period, the calendar is submitted to the Board of Education, and approved for use in the upcoming school year.
“It has to be approved yearly, that’s the big thing, and there has to be two reviews of it. So we have it posted online and people are allowed to write in and give comments and then I’ll recommend it to the school board,” May said.
The calendar is typically quite similar year-to-year, but adjustments are always being considered or implemented for the good of the community. For example, the past few years have seen an increase in teacher in-service days, especially at the start of the year.
“We’ve really pushed to have more professional development days at the very beginning of the school year. We used to have one to two, and we’ve actually increased that to four to five,” Collet said. “We just realized that coming back to school, there were so many different things that we wanted to be able to talk about.”
The creation of the Plain Local School’s district calendar is no short process, but the administration team works to create the best calendar for the diverse situations and interests of the entire Plain Local community.
