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Bermudian Springs board favors switching to hour-based calendar to reduce required makeup days
Summary
Board members signaled support for moving from a day-count to an hour-count school calendar after administrators said the district currently exceeds required instructional hours; administration will return a formal calendar for a February vote.
At the Jan. 13 caucus, the board discussed a recent law allowing districts to measure the school year by hours instead of days. Speaker 1 briefed the board: under the hour-count option the requirements are 900 instructional hours for K–6 and 990 hours for grades 7–12. She said the district currently exceeds those minimums by roughly 15 days.
Board members said hours provide flexibility for families and simplify snow-day responses. "If we transition to hours, those two days would not need to be made up," the speaker said, explaining that when the district meets hour thresholds, remote snow days are not required makeups. Several members favored the change but emphasized they did not intend to reduce instructional time.
Next step: Dr. Myers and administration will convert the previously proposed calendar into an hours-based draft and present it for a February vote so the board can adopt a formal calendar before budget adoption. The board directed staff to return a calendar that preserves instructional minutes while using the hours calculation to give the district and families more scheduling flexibility.
Context: The hour-count option is intended to give districts greater flexibility (for scheduling professional learning and responding to weather) and does not change statewide instructional requirements; rather, it measures compliance differently. Administration reported no cost impact from the change and will present concrete hour-based calendars for board approval.
