Moving away from 'early' calendar, LA Unified sets later start dates for next two school years

Students in the Los Angeles Unified School District: your next two summers just got a little bit longer.

L.A. School Board members voted 5-2 on Tuesday night to move the school district’s first day of classes to later dates in each of the next two years, but stopped short of requiring a start date after Labor Day.

Under a plan Superintendent Michelle King proposed, L.A. Unified’s 2017-18 school year will begin two weeks before Labor Day — not three weeks before, as it does currently. In 2018-19, the school year will start one week before Labor Day.

Board members Richard Vladovic, Scott Schmerelson and George McKenna had initially proposed requiring school to start no earlier than the day after Labor Day. They felt the district’s mid-August start date disrupted families’ summer travel plans and left students cooped up in classrooms during the late summer heat.

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But they welcomed King’s compromise proposal, which was crafted to address some of the deep-seated concerns about a calendar shift.

King said shifting by two weeks instead of three would still allow fall semester to end before winter break, giving district schools time to offer students make up credits they’ve missed during winter break.

Spreading the shift over two years, King said, would also minimize hit to the paychecks of employees who don’t work for the district year-round.

Next school year, classes will begin on Aug. 22. The 2018-19 school year will begin one week later, on Aug. 28. King’s plan also calls for a shorter winter break — two weeks instead of three — and for students to attend school on the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

"I’m in favor of the flexibility of easing into [the new calendar],” said McKenna. “I think we’re starting too early right now.”

The district's start date hasn't fallen this late on the calendar since 2011, the last year L.A. Unified classes began after Labor Day. Beginning in 2012, the district shifted to an "early start" calendar that began in mid-August.

The compromise didn’t meet with universal approval. Board members Mónica García and Mónica Ratliff voted against it. Daniel Jocz, an L.A. Unified teacher and California Teacher of the Year award-winner, tweeted his disapproval.

“Stick to an initiative already,” said Juan Flecha, head of the union representing L.A. Unified principals and administrators, during his comments to the board. He said his membership felt the district had made the right call in switching to a mid-August start date in 2012.

Student board member Karen Calderon cast her non-binding advisory vote in favor of the compromise. But she also said many high school seniors felt the early start helped them get a leg up on the college application process and appreciated having more classroom time ahead of exams for college prep courses — such the Advanced Placement tests, which are administered nationally in May.

"The three week difference may not seem so large,” Calderon said, "but when you think of a three week difference in your class before you take an AP exam that can determine whether you have to pay for a class in college will make a huge difference in someone’s life.”

Board president Steve Zimmer voted in favor of the later start dates, but also urged district staff to keep abreast of the impacts the switch will have.

"Even if we are moving just a week,” he said, "what does that do in terms of making sure students have access to counseling services and support services and other things they need to keep accelerating toward post-secondary experiences?”

Zimmer also stressed he wanted to ensure there was “no injury” to district employees who don’t get paychecks year-round — particularly the district’s classified workforce, like food service employees, office staffers and maintenance workers. Later start dates effectively lengthen the summer periods during which those those employees wouldn’t have paychecks.

The head of the union representing L.A. Unified’s classified employees, Letetsia Fox, said some members struggled to make ends meet over the summer. Depending on their job duties, Fox said some go between 17 and 45 days between paychecks.

The measure the board passed Tuesday is not the same as the official instructional calendar, which board members will still have to approve at a later date. Zimmer described it as a set of “guardrails” district staff will use to draw up that calendar.