Avoyelles Public Schools go to a 4-day week

Students will only attend school on one Monday during the next school year -- and that one is during state assessment test week in April -- when Avoyelles Parish schools will be operating on a Tuesday-Friday school week.

The Avoyelles School Board Executive Committee will recommend a proposed school calendar to the full board at its April 2 meeting.

It endorsed the revised calendar at its committee meeting on March 18.

The school year will start on Aug. 13 and end May 20.

Superintendent Blaine Dauzat said the parish has had several additional days built into its school calendar to ensure it meets state requirements for the number of instructional minutes in a school year.

That “cushion” of extra days means the parish can absorb “snow days” and emergency school closures without requiring students attend school on Saturdays or adding days to the end of the school year.

The new calendar reduces that number of built-in emergency days to two per semester.

What that means, Dauzat said, is “that the third day of a semester that we miss will have to be made up.”

One option to make up a day would be to have school on a Monday, he noted.

The school year calendar does not have any “Monday holidays” -- Labor Day, Veterans Day, Martin Luther King Day, as students will not attend school on Mondays.

The first school holiday of 2019-20 won’t occur until Thanksgiving break begins on Nov. 26.

Christmas holidays will begin Dec. 24 -- a Tuesday -- and students will return on Jan. 8 -- a Wednesday.

Other holidays for students during the year include Mardi Gras on Feb. 25 and five school days for Easter vacation April 10-17.

Teachers will have staff development days on a few Mondays during the year, despite the new 4-day work week schedule.

They will have workshops on Oct. 21, Jan. 6 and 7 at the end of Christmas break, and March 23.

The state assessment tests will be taken the week of April 27 to May 1. Students will be required to attend school on that Monday, April 27.

Seniors will take their final exams May 5-6. Bunkie Magnet will hold its graduation ceremonies on May 14 and LaSAS will have commencement on May 15. Marksville High seniors will graduate on May 19 and Avoyelles High’s ceremonies will be May 20.