The Knox School Board approved the corporation’s 2019-2020 school calendar last week. Students’ first day of class will be August 6, 2019, with the last day on May 22, 2020, unless make-up days need to be used. Students will once again get two weeks off for both Christmas break and spring break, as well as one week for fall break.
“The nice thing about this calendar is it’s completely balanced,” Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart told the school board. “We have 90 school days in each semester as this is presented. So I think that it looks good. Teachers have looked at it, given us comments. We’ve had it posted on our website. I haven’t heard anything from parents. But it’s pretty much aligned to what we’ve been doing, just a little bit later start, and we still get out before Memorial Day.”
Reichhart said that Knox will still have one of the earlier school start days in the area, but it will likely be close to Plymouth Community Schools. He said the calendar includes some suggestions given by staff members during a recent survey. “One of the things they said was if there’s any way we could start a couple days later, that would be helpful,” he explained. “They didn’t want to give up fall break. That was a huge thing. They still like the two weeks at spring break, which we kept in this calendar.”
Reichhart also explained that October 11, the Friday before fall break, will be a planned eLearning day next year. “The two previous days are parent/teacher conferences and especially for the elementary teachers, those make very long days,” he said. “So by doing an eLearning day, we can count it as a student day, plus I still get time, administrators will get time to do professional development with the staff.” He told board members that schools are allowed to schedule eLearning days for the purpose of letting teachers take part in professional development.
