A statewide business coalition in Texas this month strongly endorsed a year-round education calendar for the state’s schools, but stopped short of recommending a longer school year in terms of actual days spent in the classroom.
The Texas Association of Business proposed that districts throughout the state adopt a calendar with six weeks of classroom instruction followed by two weeks of vacation, with the cycle repeating six times during the year.
An alternative plan proposed by the coalition would be nine weeks of class followed by three weeks of vacation, repeated four times annually.
Such a schedule would retain the traditional 180-day school year, while maximizing the use of existing facilities and minimizing learning loss during the time-honored extended summer break, said Brad Gahm, the group’s vice president for governmental affairs.
While stopping short of recommending a longer year, the coalition called on districts to study whether more days in school would lead to additional learning.
The group also avoided the question of how officials would pay for a longer school year, saying that a changed calendar with an unchanged number of school days would lead to minimal, if any, additional costs.
For legal purposes, Nebraska school districts and school boards are the same entity, the state supreme court has ruled.
The court issued its opinion last month in response to a suit brought by Charles Dennis Zyburo, a guidance counselor who had filed a suit against his former employer, School District 160 (Norris), after he was fired from Norris High School in 1988.
A lower court ruled that Mr. Zyburo had erred when he sought legal action against the school district and not the school board. But the high court, referring to a 1991 state law on the matter, said that a school district and a school board are the same body in the eyes of the law.
