School starts next week in Butler County, but new state law will change district calendars for 2020

With the school year gearing up to start next week, a new law is causing districts to start considering the 2020-21 schedule.

The new law, formerly House Bill No. 161 and 401, will require schools to start no earlier than 14 days prior to the first Monday in September. For the 2020-21 school year, that means not starting before Aug. 24. This is pushing it back by four days from what the law currently requires.

Neelyville R-IV Superintendent Debra Parish said this will cause the district to start school much later than it currently does. For instance, the first day of school this year will be Aug. 14.

The law does not change the amount of time students are required to be in class — 1,044 hours or about 130.5 days. Parish said this will likely mean that schools will be getting out later into summer than before.

“It could be an issue because we do have students who need to get out into the farms,” she said.

For the first year, she said, it will probably be exciting for students because of the longer summer it will cause, but it won’t change much in terms of summer in the following years.

According to the Associated Press, backers of the change argue that it will aid the tourism industry by giving an extra week to summer vacation.

Dr. Scott Dill, superintendent with Poplar Bluff R-1, said the district is already starting to discuss a start date. He said the impact will be significant and have far reaching implications when it comes to the school calendar.

“It’s obviously one of those structures of our school district that impacts not only our students, but also their families very directly,” Dill said.

No decision has been made yet about how the change might impact final exams for either district. However, both Dill and Parish said they’d lean toward having finals before Christmas break. Dill said in his experience, it’s not a good idea to have finals after an extended break. Parish said the issue with waiting until after the break is the need for students to review before the test.

“We will talk with our teachers and we will talk with our families about what’s best for our school and what’s best for our community,” Dill said. “Then you consult with the Board of Education before any decisions are made.”

Jeremy Siebert, superintendent with Twin Rivers R-X, said the school district will need to delay its start by at least a few days. He said he’d need to get with the Personnel Policy Committee to discuss it, but they may look at pushing the start back a full week. R-X — as well as R-1 — will start school on Aug. 15 this year.

“We can either only delay it a few days and change up how we do our teacher workshops or we can keep everything the same as far as the days of the week and move it one week back,” he said. “It’s not too big of a deal.”

Siebert said the bill had been in the works for several years — coming from people with tourism and the state fair — but he never thought it would actually pass.

He said he wasn’t sure yet about how it might impact final exams for the first semester.

Dill said he’s frustrated that the bill passed because local control over a “very personal and local decision” has been taken away from the school districts.

“It was one of the last things I expected to come out of this particular legislature,” he said.