Cassville to change break schedule in 2019-20 school yea
March 6, 2019
Vinnie Roberts
Cassville R-IV School district approved its new school schedule for the 2019-2020 school year. With the new schedule, the school made significant changes to the break schedule going forward.
“In the state of Missouri, school districts are required to have a review of the school calendar every year,” said Dr. Richard Asbill, superintendent of Cassville Schools.
According to Asbill, Cassville assembles a calendar committee comprised of representatives from each building on the school campus. That committee then spends several months meeting and going over various options for how to set next year’s calendar.
“For Cassville, there are a couple of unique features that we have to look at,” said Asbill. “Our rural area would be impacted by inclement weather if it were to hit. There’s a good potential that if we miss days, it would be significant in a hard winter.”
The new schedule will have expanded days off for certain holiday breaks as well as cut down on days that would conflict with other area schools’ days off. According to Asbill, this was done in order to help ensure that students attending off campus classes at other area schools during the day, such as Scott Regional Technology Center, won’t have a conflict on their days off.
“All of the Barry County schools and some of the Lawrence County schools got together and had a discussion about what they would have in their calendars for days off this coming year,” said Asbill.
According to Asbill, this new calendar will more effectively line-up with other schools to ensure that off-campus students aren’t required to attend on days where their off-campus classes are either not being offered or are stymied by lack of attendance from other schools’ students.
“We want to make sure we’re aligning the best we could so that everyone was on the same page,” said Asbill.
Beginning with the 2019-2020 school year, Cassville will have an expanded Thanksgiving break. Historically, Cassville began their Thanksgiving break on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, effectively making the week of the holiday a two-day school week. Under this new schedule, Cassville will now have a full five-day week break for the Thanksgiving holiday.
“We posed it to our calendar committee, and it received very positive feedback,” said Asbill. “It will be a great opportunity for our students and parents who may want to travel or have plans in the fall. It would also benefit our employees.”
In addition, the calendar committee also moved to reschedule one of their professional development days usually held the first week back after Christmas break. Starting next year, that development day will be moved to the beginning of the year before school begins.
The new schedule will also cut the number of snow make up days in half. Until recently, Cassville built in ten days at the end of every year. Starting with the 2019-2020 school year, Cassville now only has five days scheduled to make up for inclement weather.
According to Asbill, this change comes due to a state law regarding the amount of time that schools are required to be in session in order to make up for cancellations. Previously, the language of the law required that schools make up their time in full day amounts. Now, the state only requires that schools meet the necessary hour requirements.
The new schedule was released to parents and the community in the school’s monthly online newsletter.
Vinnie Roberts
Cassville R-IV School district approved its new school schedule for the 2019-2020 school year. With the new schedule, the school made significant changes to the break schedule going forward.
“In the state of Missouri, school districts are required to have a review of the school calendar every year,” said Dr. Richard Asbill, superintendent of Cassville Schools.
According to Asbill, Cassville assembles a calendar committee comprised of representatives from each building on the school campus. That committee then spends several months meeting and going over various options for how to set next year’s calendar.
“For Cassville, there are a couple of unique features that we have to look at,” said Asbill. “Our rural area would be impacted by inclement weather if it were to hit. There’s a good potential that if we miss days, it would be significant in a hard winter.”
The new schedule will have expanded days off for certain holiday breaks as well as cut down on days that would conflict with other area schools’ days off. According to Asbill, this was done in order to help ensure that students attending off campus classes at other area schools during the day, such as Scott Regional Technology Center, won’t have a conflict on their days off.
“All of the Barry County schools and some of the Lawrence County schools got together and had a discussion about what they would have in their calendars for days off this coming year,” said Asbill.
According to Asbill, this new calendar will more effectively line-up with other schools to ensure that off-campus students aren’t required to attend on days where their off-campus classes are either not being offered or are stymied by lack of attendance from other schools’ students.
“We want to make sure we’re aligning the best we could so that everyone was on the same page,” said Asbill.
Beginning with the 2019-2020 school year, Cassville will have an expanded Thanksgiving break. Historically, Cassville began their Thanksgiving break on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, effectively making the week of the holiday a two-day school week. Under this new schedule, Cassville will now have a full five-day week break for the Thanksgiving holiday.
“We posed it to our calendar committee, and it received very positive feedback,” said Asbill. “It will be a great opportunity for our students and parents who may want to travel or have plans in the fall. It would also benefit our employees.”
In addition, the calendar committee also moved to reschedule one of their professional development days usually held the first week back after Christmas break. Starting next year, that development day will be moved to the beginning of the year before school begins.
The new schedule will also cut the number of snow make up days in half. Until recently, Cassville built in ten days at the end of every year. Starting with the 2019-2020 school year, Cassville now only has five days scheduled to make up for inclement weather.
According to Asbill, this change comes due to a state law regarding the amount of time that schools are required to be in session in order to make up for cancellations. Previously, the language of the law required that schools make up their time in full day amounts. Now, the state only requires that schools meet the necessary hour requirements.
The new schedule was released to parents and the community in the school’s monthly online newsletter.
