LaPorte district schedules eight early-release days, names curriculum director to expand teacher learning

LaPorte Community School Corporation will build dedicated teacher collaboration into next year's schedule by adding eight two-hour early-release days to the 2026-27 school calendar, Superintendent Sandra Wood said on the district podcast. The district also introduced Zach Huber as its new director of curriculum and instruction, a position the district created to lead curriculum alignment and professional learning efforts.

Wood said the change will include four early-release days in each semester; students will leave school two hours earlier on those dates and teachers will remain for structured professional learning community (PLC) time. "Those two hours ... will have that time dedicated to collaboration and to working as a PLC," Huber said, adding the sessions will focus on targeted instructional practices and not routine tasks such as grading.

The move, Wood said, responds to family questions about the calendar while prioritizing teacher development. "We recognize that an early release is a challenge for families," Wood said. She said the district will publish calendar dates in advance and create a curriculum and instruction page with resources and a way for families to contact Huber directly.

Huber described PLCs as an ongoing, collaborative process in which educators work in recurring cycles of collective inquiry focused on student learning. He summarized PLC work as answering a core set of questions about what students should know, how the district will measure mastery, and how teachers should respond when students do or do not meet expectations. He also said some researchers, including Marzano, add a fifth focus on increasing instructional competence.

Huber cited classroom- and school-level examples from his time as principal at Heilman Elementary School, saying his second graders' outcomes improved over several years and that the building now sees roughly a 75 percent pass rate on the third-grade iRead assessment for the cohort he discussed. "When teachers get together and they believe that what they do causes learning for students, the effect size is 1.57," Huber said, invoking published effect-size research by John Hattie to explain why collective teacher efficacy matters.

For measurement, Huber said the district will track both internal PLC activities (protocol use, common planning) and public metrics such as IRead results, Advanced Placement passing rates and SAT scores to assess long-term shifts in proficiency. He reiterated that leadership training and trust-building are prerequisites so that data-sharing and classroom visits are collaborative, not punitive.

Wood and Huber said the district will begin the initiative with foundational training, including a PLC summit for teachers during pre-school workdays, and roll out the early-release days monthly beginning in 2026-27. They emphasized the change is intended to be multi-year and that districtwide shifts may take three to five years to show broad effects.

The district plans to add a curriculum and instruction webpage with resources for families and direct contact information for Huber. Listeners were invited to reach out with questions about the rollout and training schedule.