Calendar Committee

The RTSD Calendar Committee held its first meeting, and kicked off by reviewing restraints and requirements related to public school instructional calendars.

The committee then examined the RTSD calendar in comparison to other district calendars, paying close attention to the start of the school year, religious and national holidays, other days off including Spring Break, and the use of built in snow days.

In breakout groups the committee discussed areas of interest, focus, or concern for RTSD, before sharing out with the whole group.

At the second meeting of the 2022 RTSD Calendar Committee, the group examined how we vet community requests to observe religious/national holidays.

The committee considered how to best honor widely practiced religious observances and federal holidays for members of our community, while realizing that additional days off impact the length of the school year.

The committee also grappled with the fact that students may take off for religious holidays, but that there are drawbacks for students electing to do so.

At the third meeting of the 2022 RTSD Calendar Committee the group examined student absences by highest frequency and considered a draft survey to the community. In breakout groups the committee discussed five considerations:

1. Do we have school on one or both election days?
2. Should we change some religious holidays to professional development days?
3. Should we eliminate parent-teacher conferences at RHS?
4. Should the district consider approving two or three years of calendars at one time?
5. What would a potential calendar survey to the community look like?

On October 11 an update on the work of the calendar committee was provided at the School Board Curriculum Committee meeting. The handouts for the documents may be found on BoardDocs under the 10/11 Curriculum Committee meeting, and a recording of the meeting is available on the RTSD YouTube channel. 

The RTSD calendar committee met on October 12 and began by briefly reviewing the information discussed at the previous night’s School Board Curriculum Committee meeting. Shortly thereafter members of the calendar committee took a survey to rank what they felt were the most important priorities to consider when crafting an instructional calendar. After taking the survey the committee analyzed the results and had a large group discussion about what they felt were the most crucial elements to include in the instructional calendar. 

The calendar committee met on Wednesday, December 21st to review draft calendars for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years. The committee discussed the differences between the calendars as a whole group, then broke into smaller groups to discuss pros and cons of each respective calendar. 

• At Tuesday evening’s School Board Curriculum Committee meeting, the Committee discussed instructional calendars for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years. A draft calendar for the 2023-2024 school year (Version 1) and two draft calendars for the 2024-2025 school year (Version A and Version B) were presented by the Administration. These calendars were created thanks to input from the District’s calendar committee, that met regularly this fall to provide feedback to the administration. The calendar committee consisted of students, parents, staff, administrators, and school board members. While no calendar exists that can satisfy every request, we believe these draft calendars effectively meet the needs of our community. Highlights of the draft instructional calendars are as follows: 
  • All calendars maintain the observance of national and religious holidays that we have historically observed that fall within a school week.
  • All calendars reflect the diversity of our community by observing additional holidays such as Diwali (Hinduism), Lunar New Year (Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism), Eid al-Fitr (Islam), and Eid al-Adha (Islam) when they fall within a school week.
  • All calendars have a full week of spring break for students, now utilizing teacher flexible in-service for some of the days to capture additional professional development time.
  • All calendars have virtual instruction days for the Pennsylvania primary and general election days to shorten the length of the school year in June. In past years, Radnor schools were closed for instruction on primary and general election days.
  • All calendars maintain some 2-hour delays (Mondays with the exception of the day after Halloween) or 2-hour early dismissals (Fridays) that provide time critical for employee professional development. These days are strategically placed to create longer weekends or align with elementary days off, when possible, in response to parent feedback.
  • A summary list of holidays and days off is on page two of each calendar in chronological order.
  • The draft calendar for 2023-2024 has a post Labor Day start.
  • The draft calendars for 2024-2025 include options for a pre and post Labor Day start.
• A recording of the January 3 Curriculum Committee meeting is available on the RTSD YouTube channel, and the instructional calendar discussion begins at 29:45 into the video. As we continue to discuss these calendars publicly with the School Board and community, we may see changes and additional options before the School Board votes on the calendars in January and/or February.

• At the January 17 Curriculum Committee meeting an updated instructional calendar for the 2023-2024 school year was presented. No calendars for the 2024-2025 school year were discussed. The 2023-2024 calendar took into account feedback from the Board at the January 3 Curriculum Committee, as well as input from the community subsequent to the meeting. The changes to the calendar presented at the January 17 meeting from the one presented on January 3 are as follows:
  • Tuesday, January 2 was added as a professional development day. This will serve as a flex day for teachers who complete evening parent conferences in November.
  • The 2-hour early dismissal on January 19 was eliminated.
  • The 2-hour late start on February 12 was eliminated.
  • February 16 was added as a professional development day. This creates a four day weekend for families.
  • March 25 and 26 were changed from flexible professional development days to offices open/no school days, preserving a traditional spring break for teachers.
  • May 24 was maintained as a K-5 assessment day, but a professional development day was created for employees working in grades 6-12. This creates a four day weekend for families.
  • Graduation was moved from June 5 to June 12.
  • The last professional development day on the calendar was eliminated.
  • Should there be emergency school closure days, the last student day, which is a half day, would be June 12. This would mean that graduation and the last day of school coincide, so that everyone in the Radnor community could attend graduation if they wanted.
  • The last teacher day would be June 13 if there are no emergency school closure days used.
• A recording of the January 17 Curriculum Committee meeting is available on the RTSD YouTube channel, and the instructional calendar discussion begins at 1:23:25 into the video. Based on the feedback at the meeting, administration plans to take a final look at the calendars prior to the School Board Business meeting on Tuesday, January 24. Administration will present updated draft calendars for the 2024-2025 school year at the February 14 Curriculum Committee meeting.

• Based on feedback received at the January 17 Curriculum Committee meeting, as well as a final look at the calendar and discussion among the administrative team, the following changes were made since the Curriculum Committee meeting on January 17:
  • The 2-hour early dismissal on October 20 was moved to October 6 to better align with the elementary MTSS cycle.
  • The virtual election days on November 7 and April 23 were changed to Professional Development (PD) days.
    • This gives us two more PD days in a year where we are implementing a new math program K-8.
  • The Calendar Committee’s goal was to use virtual election days to end the school year earlier. This conversion from virtual days to PD days does not alter the end of the school year. It is likely we may need to use virtual instruction days on election days for future calendars.
  • The evening parent-teacher conferences at the elementary level were moved from November 21 to November 20 to align with what we have done in the past.
• The final calendar the administration is recommending for School Board approval at the January 24, 2023 meeting can be found here.

At the February 14 Curriculum Committee meeting two calendars for the 2024-2025 school year were presented. Calendar A proposed a before Labor Day start, used virtual days on election days to recoup instructional time, held graduation on June 4^th, and anticipated the last student day of school to be June 6^th if there were no snow days. Calendar B proposed an after-Labor Day start, used Professional Development (Act 80) days on election days, held graduation on June 11^th, which would also be the last day of school for students if no weather emergency days were used. The administration also presented a considerations document that contained a historical look at the start and end dates of the school year dating back to 2016-2017. This document recommended ending the school year before the second week of June (approximately June 14) by considering virtual instruction days on election days, shortening the length of Spring Break, and/or starting before Labor Day when Labor Day falls late in September.

At the February School Board Business Meeting administration reviewed 2024-2025 instructional calendars (A and B*) that were presented at the February 14 Curriculum Committee meeting. Additionally, Calendar C* was presented as another option based on feedback from the Curriculum Committee. Calendar C was identical to Calendar B, except for the placement of Spring Break. Since Spring Break fell extremely late (April 14-18) in the 2024-2025 school year the suggestion at the Curriculum Committee meeting was to decouple it from Easter in order to provide students an earlier break. Calendar C maintains Good Friday (April 18) as a holiday in 2024-2025, but moves the remaining days off to align with Eid al Fitr creating a week-long Spring Break that falls two weeks earlier (March 31-April 4). Administration also reviewed the considerations document that was presented at the February 14 Curriculum Committee meeting. Community members with feedback on the instructional calendars are invited to provide input at calendarfeedback@rtsd.org.

*Version updated 2/22/23