North Branch school board approves 2023-24 calendar

“Our winter break next year will be only one week because the Christmas holiday falls on the weekend,” she explained, noting that the final December day of school would fall on Dec. 22. “When people saw that, there was a sign of exhaustion. There will be the holiday on Monday, Jan. 1 because of New Year’s.

“But the suggestion was that staff would come back on Jan. 2 and have a professional learning day. That would give families another day of vacation, and it would give staff a chance to have some development work leading to a three-day week.”

To do that, Paul said changes were made to the Welcome Days at the start of the year.

“The request was to have one of the Welcome Days before Labor Day and one of the days after Labor Day,” she said. “That way we could move one of the professional days to the middle of the school year.”

She added the changes would create no additions or subtractions from the number of school days for the year, and the board unanimously approved the calendar.

As part of her report, Paul also discussed school opening during “emergencies,” which included a look at weather-related closings.

Paul noted that the state requires 165 instructional days, and the district has scheduled 172 days of direct instruction this year. As of Thursday’s meeting, the district has taken three days off because of the weather.

“We do have a buffer to have tried-and-true ‘snow’ days,” Paul said. “I remember snow days … and there is a value for just having that time [off].”

Paul also explained that there is an hour requirement for class days at the high school level, which makes it trickier to determine when a school has reached its limit of allowable days missed.

Board member Adam Trampe wanted to make sure the public knew how close the district is to moving to e-learning when it becomes necessary to make sure North Branch meets the state requirements. Board member Sarah Grovender asked if the district had considered making the next school closing an e-learning day for high school students only, and board member Heather Naegele reminded the board that a power outage caused by the weather would affect e-learning.

“The state also sets a maximum of five e-learning days, so some districts are struggling with that,” Paul said. “We do have the ability to provide quality e-learning. But I feel responsible to limit the number of days. …

“We will not be adding days in June – that’s not productive learning time.”

Officers chosen

Prior to the regular meeting the board held an organizational meeting to name officers for the coming year.

Tim MacMillan and Grovender both were reelected as chair and vice chair, respectively. Naegele, last year’s treasurer, was selected as clerk, while Jesse LaValla will replace Naegele as treasurer.