UPDATE, 02/27: The Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board has released the school calendar for the 2020-21 school year. The article has been updated to reflect that.
Students will need to have their notebooks ready and pencils sharped earlier for the upcoming school year.
The first day of school will be Tuesday, September 1st, 2020, with second semester getting underway on Friday, January 29th, 2021. The last day of school will be on Thursday, June 24th, 2021.
Hastings-Prince Edward District School Board approved the 2020 school calendar by a vote of 5 to 2 Monday night.
The Algonquin and Lakeshore Catholic District School Board school year will also start on September 1st and end on June 24th. Their calendar was developed in partnership with the Hastings-Prince Edward and the Limestone District School Boards.
“It does happen every few years,” Communications Manager for the school board Kerry Donnell tells the MyBancroftNow.com newsroom. She points out that the last time it happened was in 2009. “If we started after Labour Day, it would put the end of the school year into July,” she adds. “That was not even going to be considered.”
The school year is mandated to be 194 days long and include 7 PA (Professional Activity) days. Donnell says they also have to juggle statutory holidays and this year they also have to deal with it being a leap year.
The P.A. days will be on August 31st, September 25th and November 20th in 2020 and January 29th, April 30th, June 4th and June 25th in 2021. Students will have December 21st, 2020 to January 1st, 2021 off for the holidays as usual and March break will be the week of March 15th.
Donnell says the on-going teacher strikes did not affect the 2020-21 school calendar. Teacher strikes have been on-going since December and education workers with CUPE walked off the job for one day in November 2019.
Donnell notes that they had 1,093 responses regarding this year’s calendar, which is 104 more than what they got for last year’s.