The Hermosa Beach City School District adopted the academic calendar for the 2017-18 school year last week, with school board members forced to make difficult choices about vacation time for district families and conflicts with summer school.
School board members had to choose between two potential calendars. Although both options had a school start date of Wednesday, September 6, they differed in the day that students would be released for summer. Under one option, students would remain in school until Tuesday, June 26. The second option, ultimately selected by board members on a 4-1 vote, releases students on Thursday, June 21.
The two options contained the same amount of instructional time, a figure set by state education officials. But the option featuring a later release date gave students an extended Presidents Day break, commonly known as “Ski Week,” from Feb. 19-23. The selected choice eliminated Ski Week in favor of a long weekend, with Friday Feb. 16 and Monday Feb. 19 as holidays. (Both calendars also included an added professional development day for teachers.)
Board members ultimately selected the earlier release date because of conflicts with summer activities for students, especially summer school. HBCSD graduating eighth graders interested in taking summer courses at Mira Costa High School would finish school after the start of summer courses.
“I think people understand we are between a rock and a hard spot,” said Superintendent Pat Escalante. “We are trying to coordinate with two other districts. But they’re unified districts and their needs are different.”
Eighth graders at Hermosa Valley School have the choice of attending Mira Costa or Redondo Union High School. Historically, the bulk of them have chosen to go to Mira Costa. Although increasing numbers have chosen to go to Redondo in recent years, about 80 percent of last year’s class is now at Mira Costa.
Summer courses, which have an accelerated pace in order to fit a semester- or year-long course into a matter of weeks, have strict attendance requirements. For year-long classes, two absences is the limit; for semester courses, students can miss no more than one day. Under this scenario, a student from Hermosa would be automatically unable to enroll.
“This is a real challenge for us, year after year,” Board member Patti Ackerman said.
Adopting the earlier start date lessens, but does not eliminate, the problem. For the 2017/18 academic year, Mira Costa finishes school on Thursday, June 14. Summer school dates for 2018 have not been officially set, according to Kathy Duffy, who works for the MBX Foundation that operates Mira Costa’s summer school. But for this coming summer, classes begin Monday, June 19; the last day of instruction for HBCSD is June 21.
Some measures have already been taken to lessen the impact. Hermosa now offers optional “flex access,” in which eighth grade students can attend summer school courses at Mira Costa during the last few days at Valley, an option which will be available again for 2018, Escalante said. And enrollment in a second session for semester-long classes, which starts July 10 in 2017, would not be affected; board members said they would try and ensure some spaces in the second section are set aside for Hermosa students.
Board Member Carleen Beste, who was the lone “no” vote on the earlier end date, pointed out that selecting the option including Ski Week means that holidays in Hermosa’s calendar line up better with those of MBUSD. For Hermosa parents with a child in both high school and elementary or middle school, eliminating this can mean the difficulty of having to coordinate multiple calendars.
“I would rather see the days made up another way than give up the February break,” Beste said.
But the board’s options were limited. Under the district’s agreement with educators, board members had to choose one of the two options, each of which had been previously negotiated between teachers and the district.
A pair of trends has made the scheduling difficulty more pronounced in recent years. First, summer school is becoming more popular, with ambitious students increasingly opting to take required courses, like Health, over the summer, while other students are taking traditional courses, like world history, during the summer to create more room in their schedules for the school year. And second, unified school districts like Manhattan and Redondo are pushing the school start date up in response to their high schoolers’ growing participation in Advanced Placement tests. These tests are administered by the College Board in May and, by starting earlier, students get more time to learn the material.
The Hermosa district’s small size and organization mean that starting school before Labor Day is not financially feasible, Escalante said.
“For us to open school in August for just a couple of days, the financial offset is not practical. Our system is structured differently for 12-month versus 10-month employees, and we are very mindful of excess costs,” she said.
