When LT’s Director of Curriculum and Instruction, Scott Eggerding, begins the process of making the next year’s calendar, he looks at calendars from years past. Eggerding considers how to balance the number of days in each semester. He takes note of when holidays fall and keeps in mind the mandatory number of days students and teachers must be in school.

“My job is to offer a big picture to the Board of Education [BOE], so that we can make a good decision about the calendar,” Eggerding said.

Students are required by the state to be in school 176 days per year, and the teachers have a contract dictating a maximum of 183 workdays per year. Eggerding must consider these requirements when making the schedule, in addition to ensuring that each semester has a close-to-equal number of days in each semester, he said.

“Overall we try to be sensitive when selecting start and end dates for the school year,” Superintendent Dr. Tim Kilrea said.

The 2016-17 calendar appears messy due to the BOE’s focus on having a better balance between the fall and spring semesters and due to 2016 being a leap year. Even though there is a near two-week imbalance between the number of days in each semester next year, second semester will have more interruptions such as AP testing, state testing and the All-School Assembly.

Despite its incongruities, the 2016-2017 calendar will be an improvement from the 2015-2016 calendar, Eggerding said.

“This year is really just the messed up calendar,” he said. “Maybe we could have jumped [this year’s] calendar by starting a week later, but then it would have thrown off the balance between the semesters. This year will be the worst, and then [the calendar] will cycle through again eventually.”

In order to receive feedback from members of the LT community, Kilrea and Eggerding share the proposed calendar with surrounding schools, as well as with the community by posting it on the LT website and send it in the E-News email update to families.

“I think the most positive feedback we got about the calendar was when we moved finals before winter break,” Kilrea said. “[Students] had wanted that for a long time. Now it’s more like the collegiate level, and it’s just a clean break so that when you go home for break it’s not like you’re coming back to assignments.”

When the BOE switched finals to before winter break in 2010, they made a 10-year prediction for future calendars. They agreed not to start any earlier than Aug. 17, which is when classes started this year. However, with 2016 being a leap year, LT would have to start Aug.15 if they were to start the same week for the 2016-17 school year as they did for this year.

Next year finals have a more conventional layout, spanning from Tuesday, Dec. 20 to Thursday, Dec. 22. This year, finals are Friday, Dec. 18, Monday, Dec. 21 and Tuesday, Dec. 22. Originally the BOE had finals going until Dec. 23 this year, but that didn’t allow much flexibility for people to travel for the holidays, Kilrea said.

“We thought that [ending on] Dec. 22 would [allow for] enough time for instructional time in first semester, as well as flexibility,” Kilrea said.

For the past two years, as well as the upcoming year, Eggerding has scheduled two student non-attendance days that are placeholders in case school is closed due to events such as inclement weather or power outages. If there are cancelled school days, these scheduled non-attendance days will become attendance days to prevent students from having to add more school days in June. “We’ve had [weather make-up days] scheduled in the past, but those have not been specified on the calendar,” Kilrea said. “We are now identifying [these days] in advance so students and parents are aware.”

This coming spring, graduation is on Sunday, May 29. It is the first time that LT will hold graduation over Memorial Day weekend. Spring 2017’s graduation will be on Sunday, June 4.

Student Council vice president, Haley Gorman ‘17 appreciates that finals are concurrent. She also appreciates the June 4 graduation date for the class of 2017 because it allows her to spend more time with family and friends in summer.

“I think the calendar looks great. The [BOE] has done a fantastic job of spacing in terms of days off and scheduling,” Gorman said.