The San Antonio Independent School District board of trustees approved a modified academic calendar for the upcoming school year Monday evening.
SAISD officials said the changes will give the district flexibility during the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.The modified calendar has three intersession weeks spread out across the school year just before or after holiday weeks: the week before Thanksgiving, the week after New Year’s and the week after Spring break.
The additional weeks push back the end of the school year until June 18 — almost a month later than normal.
“Primarily we’re doing this as a contingency plan” in case a school has an outbreak of COVID-19, SAISD Superintendent Pedro Martinez said. “The three intersession weeks allow us to make up that time for those students or for that school.”
If SAISD doesn’t need to use the intersession weeks to make up for school closures, the district plans to use them to bring in students who need to catch up on learning they might have missed while schools were closed this past spring.
The remaining students would remain on break during intersession, and the district will pay teachers who choose to work.
The Edgewood school district is also considering an intersession calendar for the 2020-2021 school year. The board is scheduled to vote on a calendar Tuesday night that would add four intersession weeks in October, January, March and June.
Camille Phillips can be reached at Camille@tpr.org or on Twitter at @cmpcamille.
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