Exam schedules, professional development days, student contact days, construction at Halverson Elementary School and graduation timing all featured in the Albert Lea Area Schools board discussion of the proposed 2019-20 calendar brought to the board’s study session Monday.

The draft calendar shows an Aug. 19 start day for elementary schools, which also doubles as an orientation day for sixth- and eighth-graders. Grades six through 12 officially begin Aug. 20. The final day of school would be May 21. The calendar also includes redistributed professional development days throughout the school year after teacher feedback.

Executive Director of Teaching and Learning Mary Jo Dorman said the academic rationale for the early start included more instructional prep time for Advanced Placement exams and Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments. Additionally, an earlier start time means students take finals before the winter break, reducing student stress load over break — according to parent feedback, she said — and freeing up instructional time from review sessions after break. School board members Dennis Dieser, Angie Hanson and Dave Klatt all mentioned finals before break as what they see as a positive of the early start system.

However, both board members Jill Marin and Hanson said they would have liked the district to bring forth a traditional start calendar. For the study session Monday, the district prepared one calendar: an early start model.

“I guess I’d prefer to get an option between an early start calendar and a traditional, after Labor Day calendar to vote on as a board, like we’ve done in the past,” Hanson said.

Starting before Labor Day is allowed as an exemption to a state statute if the district submits a waiver that meets certain qualifications. One such qualification includes accomodating a construction or remodeling project of $400,000 or more affecting a district school facility.

For Marin, the data wasn’t there to support what could be the district’s fourth year with an early start. While student AP scores have increased, Marin noted those taking AP tests represent a small portion of the student community, while MCA scores, she said, seem to be headed in the wrong direction.

“I don’t see the data to back up an early start, and I would also like to see a traditional (calendar),” she said.

The early start calendar was supported unanimously by the district’s learning team, a group of 22 teachers and administrators representing every building, Dorman said.

“The rationale for providing one option (is) your professional teachers and administrators within the district all recommend an early start for the academic reasons that we have presented,” Albert Lea Area Schools Superintendent Mike Funk said. “The feedback from conferences, from parents has been nil in the community on a later start versus an early start. I think people have grown accustomed to it, and that’s why we presented just the early start option.”

Funk said after the meeting the district would bring a draft of a traditional start calendar to the next meeting for board members to look at, but with the intention of having the board vote on an early start calendar.

School board member Neal Skaar also rose concerns about the number of student contact days drafted into the calendar. The elementary school had 172 student contact days — days of instructional time teachers spend with students — while the secondary schools had 173. To him, a comfortable number of student contact days is 174, he said.

Additionally, impending construction on Halverson Elementary School’s gymnasium is an argument in favor of a traditional start, Hanson said.

The project at Halverson is not expected to be complete until October, Funk said.

“If there’s any year that it would make the most sense to start after Labor Day, it would be this year,” she said. “I do know that the gym remodel and our expansion in Halverson will go into October, but if we start after Labor Day it’ll be less of an overlap.”

Student school board representative and senior Gigi Otten said though she sees drawbacks to the early start calendar — citing the state fair and a spring sports timeline that continues after seniors complete school — she is in favor of the proposed calendar timeline.

“From everyone I’ve talked to and myself, especially from the students, we prefer doing the early start because of the Christmas break and the semester one ending,” she said. “It just doesn’t make sense to come back to school and redo what you’ve already done.”

Marin asked whether the district would build in make-up days in case of snow days. But up to five e-learning days count as instructional days, so even with a streak of days off like this year, the district still has days to spare before considering make-ups, said Skaar.

This year, the district has utilized its five e-learning days accepted by the state as instructional time, and called one additional snow day. State law requires district calendars include at least 165 instructional days, and the district is still on track to make 172.

Graduation day itself was also subject of a conversation between earlier and later. Executive Director of Administrative Services Kathy Niebuhr said the district was considering May 15 or May 22, which is during Memorial Day weekend. The latter would allow students more time between AP testing, finishing up spring sports and graduation, but also puts approximately a week between the last instructional day for seniors and graduation day itself.

The school board also got to experience a firsthand sample of the new phonics curriculum employed by district elementary schools for the first time this year. Hawthorne Elementary School second-grade teacher Pam Jacobsen walked board members through a mini-lesson and shared her experiences using the new curriculum in the classroom. She said the explicit nature of instruction has increased student understanding and engages students across ability levels. Within the first two months of school, all her students advanced a reading level. In the past, that hasn’t always been true, she said.

“I feel like this is the first year I’m really teaching phonics,” Jacobsen said.