Written by: Seth Gordon, Newberg Graphic 

Many parents and staff in the Newberg School District were caught off guard when both options for the 2016-2017 calendar started school before Labor Day, which falls on Sept. 5 this year.

District communications director Claudia Stewart said the district was inundated with unsolicited feedback about not providing an option that started school after Labor Day, so the district has added a third option that does so and re-launched its survey last week.

Stewart said the feedback was unsolicited not because the district viewed it as bad, but because a comment box wasn’t provided on the survey. Those who did provide feedback had to take extra steps do so, usually through email, which Stewart takes as an indication that feelings on the matter were especially strong.

Option 1, which was the most popular among the original two choices on the survey, makes the first day for students Aug. 31 and the last June. 15. Stewart said the second option opens the school year Sept. 5 and lets out June 21, but is basically the same calendar with the opening and closing dates pushed back.

“People had a lot to say, very definitely,” Stewart said. “The board will still make a decision on April 12, but (Superintendent Kym LeBlanc-Esparza) is going to sift through all the comments and look at the responses (this) week.”

The district first collected feedback from school leaders, who in some cases consulted with their site councils before making their recommendations, and a recommendation from the conference committee in late January.

A volunteer calendar committee was formed Feb. 25 and considered several major factors, but starting prior to Labor Day was the biggest topic of discussion.

Other considerations included: aligning the schedule with most of the sizeable districts in the area, which had elected to start before Labor Day; keeping the length of semesters as even as possible while also ending early enough for seniors to submit first-semester transcripts in their college applications; and the desire to continue giving students the entire week of Thanksgiving off and that doing so and starting after Labor Day would push the final day of school into the third full week of June.

“The language arts adoption includes front-loaded professional development, so they were trying to allow for a few days for that,” Stewart said of the calendar committee. “There were conference days and they looked at student assessment windows and previous calendars. This committee put together those two options and did discuss the fact that starting school before Labor Day was not the normal practice, but they went ahead and forwarded these two options.”

Both final options give students the entire week of Thanksgiving off, which Stewart noted was a major area of interest in the feedback received since the district added an option starting after Labor Day. Otherwise, she said the feedback consisted mostly of opinions on starting before or after Labor Day and approval that a new option was added, but that some helpful advice was also given.

“People also said it’s okay to start before Labor Day but just let us know a year ahead of time,” Stewart said. “That makes sense because it has not been the school district practice, so people make vacation plans. Consequently, (LeBlanc-Esparza) has said that some districts make calendars for two or three years. There has been a tremendous amount of feedback on it.”