Many people have wondered why the school district does not have a set calendar yet. Multiple stories have been circulating around the community in an effort to explain this.

“There is a legislation recently passed in Lansing on the topic,” history teacher Brett Mead said. “The new legislation stated that half days are not to be considered in the legal amount of hours we are required to teach.”

The required amount of teaching hours is 1,098 hours. By adding half days, it would require teachers to stay longer than they actually need to stay.

“The district calendar is discussed between the Teachers Union and the School administration,” Principal Mark Suchowski said. “Because this legislation was passed, our district has been working individual months throughout the year for the calendar.”

Before the legislation was passed, half days were used for ‘professional development’, which is used by teachers for the second half of the day when students are not in the building.

“When there was professional development, teachers would stay after the students left,” Suchowski said. “Now if we were able to plan half days, it would be difficult for the teachers to come in because it would exceed the amount of hours required. And in order to have half days, we would also have to come up with extra funding somehow; and as far as I know, we are not allowed to do that.”

Some may have questions about long term vacations, such as Christmas Vacation and spring break.

“Dates for Christmas vacation, for example, were set a long time ago by the county,” Suchowski said. “The county made the decisions of when these long term vacations should be a long time ago and has then planned for several years.”

The answer to the school calendar situation is here. To see the school calendar, see the school website for a monthly update.