Next Year's School Calendar To Have Fewer Educational Days for Students

Next year's educational calendar is a good news, bad news proposition for Lakeville's public school families.

On Jan. 8, the district's School Board approved next year's educational calendar and it features two fewer educational days for students.

(See the calendars by clicking on them to the right.)

Lakeville already had more educational days for students as compared to other local school districts (see table below). By reducing in-class days for students, teachers, administrators say, will have more time for curriculum planning, grading papers, and professional development.

Superintendent Dr. Lisa Snyder told Lakeville Patch that the calendar change makes Lakeville a "21st Century school district."

"The bottom line is do we want 'A' teachers or 'C' teachers?" she said. "If we want our teachers to be high performing, then we have to create the systems, training and structures to support them."

According to the document approved at the School Board meeting, even with the two-day class time reduction, "we see a recapturing of this time ... because students are spending less class time on district assessments and teachers are not pulled out of class-time as often for professional development/curriculum work."

Snyder said the district worked collaboratively with Education Minnesota Lakeville, the district's teacher's union, in looking at the calendar, with the process then moving to committees for research before formal adoption.

All told, the process took more than a year, Snyder said.