Palos Heights District 128 Announces Early Release Days for Upcoming School Year

—Information from Palos Heights District 128 blog.

Students in Palos Heights District 128 will be dismissed early 15 days in the upcoming year, to allow time for collaboration among teachers in each school, the district announced Thursday.

The district will begin using Professional Learning Communities as a method of improving students’ educational experience. The process ”allows for focused collaboration amongst teacher grade level and content teams to study student performance as a way to measure impact of instruction,” and “...helps build accountability as individuals and teams.”

The process calls for time built into the workday several days each month, in which teachers work together on the four guiding principles and questions of PLC:

1. What do we want all students to know and do?

2. How will we know that students are learning?

3. How will we respond when students are not learning?

4. How will we enrich and extend the learning for students who are proficient?

Early release times will be 1:30 p.m. in each building. On PLC days students will have a condensed schedule to allow for contact in every subject area. Lunch and recess will be reduced on those days to a 30-minute block.

Early Release Days include:

• September 9
• September 23
• October 21
• November 4
• November 18
• December 2
• December 16
• January 13
• February 3
• March 2
• March 23
• April 6
• April 27
• May 11
• May 25