Draft of 2018-19 School Calendar presented to SDOC Board

The School District of Oconee County (SDOC) is already planning for next year. Monday night, Assistant Superintendent of Operations Steve Hanvey presented a draft of the 2018-19 school calendar. “We did present a draft and we are going to share that with our groups as well; Teacher Forums, Parent Advisory, and others. The biggest change is that it would have us actually having seven in-service workdays before school instead of the typical five that we do. So, this would mean that teachers would come in a little bit earlier in the year. When we looked at the calendar there were several things; the State Legislature puts the requirement that you can’t start before the third Monday of August, so for the coming school year that would be Aug. 20, which is late in August. So, to be able to get in things like a three Thanksgiving break, a two week break at Christmas and a full week of Spring Break and not go into the first full week of June or to the end of the first full week of June we thought we would look at this new proposal. Teachers always tell us they need more time at the beginning of the year to get ready plus next year we will be doing our AdvancED reaccreditation process and we felt like we could get a head start on that and do some of that work for the district and school level on those earlier days as well. So, some of those will be designated in-service and staff development days and then others will be workdays. So, we are going to get it vetted by our different stakeholders and obviously the board wants to hear from teachers. The other options that we had but didn’t propose are to go through June 7, one option had a shorten Spring Break in it and a shorten Christmas Break in it. It’s hard to get 188 days for students and ten additional days for teachers in when you start on the third Monday in August and you want to try to get finished by graduation on June 1. So, we will look at it and listen to the folks to see what they have to tell us and then we will take a recommendation back for vote at our next board meeting in December.” To see the proposed calendar visit the SDOC’s website at www.oconee.k12.sc.us.