BOONE, Iowa—The Boone School Board officially adopted the school calendar for the 2019-2020 school year during a meeting on January 7th. The Board did approve one minor adjustment in the calendar before adopting it for the next school year. Boone School Superintendent, Dr. Brad Manard on the KWBG News Public Affairs Program “Tuned In” did talk about the process used to develop the calendar.
The following is a statement from the district about the calendar:
Three years ago, then Governor Branstad established a beginning of the school year start date as August 23 or later. This was to accommodate the Iowa State Fair and tourism in Iowa. With this start date, the flexibility in moving to an earlier date to start school was eliminated. As a result, as August 23 has moved later into the week, it has impacted the calendar by moving the required hours/days past Memorial Day.
By rule “Seniors may be released for up to 30 hours toward the district total reported hours or 5 days toward the 180 days.” This means once the school year moves beyond Memorial Weekend, the district cannot hold graduation the weekend prior to Memorial Day as this would mean releasing seniors more than 30 hours or 5 days prior to the end of the school year. Therefore, the 2020 graduation ceremony is scheduled to be on Sunday, May 24th at 2:00 p.m. on Memorial Day Weekend.
The first day of school will be August 26, 2019. The only other significant changes to the calendar will be on December 20th, the day prior to the holiday break starting and on the last day of school at the end of the school year, school will be released at 1:15 p.m. Each year, slight modifications to the calendar are made to align instructional and family support needs with the legal requirements for days and hours.
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