Schools Consider Starting Before Labor Day

Release, Prince William County Schools:

The Prince William County School Board will consider two school calendar options at its December 17 meeting. Staff presented a standard calendar option at the Board’s December 3 meeting similar to past calendars. Now, the School Board has a choice—to open before or after Labor Day in 2015.

Full listings of both options, as well as a comparison of the key differences between the options, are posted on the PWCS website as well as in BoardDocs.

Following the December 3 meeting, PWCS staff did further research into a pre-Labor Day opening. Virginia Department of Education staff confirmed that PWCS would qualify for a waiver based on a mathematical average of the five highest “snow day” totals from the past 10 years. As a result, the calendar committee was reconvened and recommended the pre-Labor Day option for consideration by the Board.

If adopted by the School Board, the pre-Labor Day option would start school Monday, August 31, one week earlier than in the standard calendar, and end school almost one week earlier on Friday, June 17. That option would also include a two-week winter break. The pre-Labor Day calendar option would also provide more instructional time prior to SOL, AP, IB, and Cambridge tests.

The standard option would start school Tuesday, September 8 and end school on Thursday, June 23. The winter break in that option would not be two full weeks, and would start on Wednesday, December 23.