A longer Christmas break is one of the benefits for the 2017-18 school calendar, which was approved by the Southeast Cornerstone Public School Division during their board meeting on Thursday.
Another benefit was that by meeting some efficiencies in developing the 2017-18 school calendar, Cornerstone is projecting some savings in their staffing budget.
“Holy Family and Cornerstone had worked on the 2017-18 school calendar for the course of the last couple of months,” said Lynn Little, director of education for Cornerstone.
“We have always worked very tightly with our staff, but this year even so more knowing the fiscal difficulties that were ahead of us,” said Little.
The Southeast Cornerstone Teachers Association were interested in working on improvements to Professional Development days for teachers. “We wanted to look at how Professional Development was being delivered, what was being offered and how we could make these days more efficient while still meeting the needs of the teachers in our division.”
“We did a thought exchange and incorporates their concerns into developing the school calendar,” said Little.
One of the top concerns from teachers and staff was in regards to travel, especially since Cornerstone is a very large school division. Sometimes, that travel time can be difficult due to winter storms.
“We are able to use technology to offer programming and webinars to teachers in their home school,” said Little. “Staff will also get a choice on which webinars will meet their needs. Another thing we heard loud and clear was that teachers wanted increased planning time, which is a real need for them to get uninterrupted time done in their classrooms. We found a way to work this into our school calendar, when the students weren’t in the building, and reduces the need for release staff.”
With the reduction of travel costs, a reduction of sub costs, the calendar adjustments would amount to 1.5 per cent savings from the projected $77.2 million staffing budget.
