Superintendents group proposes 2025'26 calendar; board told proposal will come for approval Feb. 10

The district presented a draft 2025'26 school calendar to board members, explaining that September 1, 2025 falls on a Monday and that alignment with other area districts allows scheduling a spring break and tightening the conference and comp-day schedule.

Presenter Matt Shirk (district administration) said the calendar aims for predictability across the four cooperating districts, balancing student instructional days and staff contract days. Key changes include:

- Taking advantage of a Monday Sept. 1 start to create a spring break window without lengthening the school year. - Consolidating the kindergarten and first-grade schedule to quarters rather than trimesters so all grades use the same reporting cadence. - Spreading parent conference evenings across buildings rather than compressing them into a single week.

The draft keeps the district at roughly 171 student days and about 180 staff days under the current proposal; the presenter noted instructional hours drive requirements more than raw student days. The presenter also described snow-day makeup flexibility, estimating available high-school instructional-hour buffers equivalent to roughly 2.5 to 3 days.

The draft calendar has been approved by the IS superintendents committee and the IS board of directors and will be placed on the district board agenda for a formal vote on Feb. 10.

Why it matters: The calendar affects families, athletics, transportation and co-op programming between districts; shifting K'1 to quarters aligns reporting and may change how teachers schedule interventions and progress monitoring.