Macks Creek School 2020-2021 Calendar Survey for Parents & Guardians

* 1. Discussion: The Macks Creek School Board is presenting two calendar options modeled after the current school year's "hybrid" calendar for the 2020-2021 school year.  As a hybrid, our calendar reflects elements of a traditional calendar and a 4-day week calendar. Unlike the 4-day week calendar (where students do not attend on Mondays), the hybrid provides more days in session with shorter day lengths.  Our hybrid also includes built-in snow days and protected days off regardless of how many school days are missed for bad weather.  Many districts, who adopted a four-day week this year, have found their spring will be filled with many 5-day weeks (with much longer day lengths than us) as Mondays are their only make-up day options. Our hybrid calendar is very traditional for the 1st half of the school year and provides a series of four-day weeks during the second semester (most of which are protected).

As a result of new Missouri law, school may NOT start before August 24, 2020.  Both calendar options reflect this mandate. Both options also include enough minutes so 5 days may be missed without using a make-up day.  Both calendars have listed December 18th as a make-up day, if our 1st snow-day occurs before Christmas break (as was the case this school year) otherwise it will be a teacher PD day.  Both calendars include 13 days for required teacher professional development.  Both calendars provide approximately 1,080 hours of in-session time with sufficient additional hours to include 5 built-in snow days with the last day of school on May 20th.  Lastly, the Make-Up Schedule for Missed School Days has been reworked so as to more effectively recoup days lost early in the winter (using lessons learned from our current school year). 

Here are the only differences between the two calendars: 

-Calendar Option A includes 165 days in-session, but due to the mandated August 24th start date, does not include a full week off for Thanksgiving.   Note: If 5 snow days are forgiven, in-session days would equal 160.

-Calendar Option B includes 163 days in-session. This is achieved by increasing the day length by 5 minutes (dismissing at 3:06 instead of 3:01).  By increasing the day length it also provides a full-week off for Thanksgiving.  Note: If 5 snow days are forgiven, in-session days would equal 158. 

Question: Which Calendar Option do you prefer?