More on school calendars: Southlake's situation

A good article in the DMN (reg reqd) that describes how Southlake is ahead of the curve with regard to school calendars. (I shared my thoughts on this topic a couple of weeks ago.)

The reason Southlake is ahead of the curve, the article says, is that they already start their school year in compliance with the new state-mandated earliest-start-date. But here's the deal -- this year their kids don't get out of school until June 9th. June 9th???? Wow, that's almost East Coast scheduling, but they don't start school until mid-to-late September.

I went to the Southlake Carroll ISD to look at their calendar, thinking I would find it padded with extra breaks (like Plano's full-week fall break) and other schedule puffery. But no, their schedule is pretty much like our schedule in the Lewisville ISD. A long weekend in the fall, a few in-service days sprinkled here and there, the same time-off at Christmas.

The calendar-law doesn't go into effect until summer of 2007. This year, LISD starts school on Monday August 14th, about the same as previous years. It will be interesting to see how the LISD board will reset the calendar for 2007-08. Will our kids still be in school on June 9th?

If anyone has any direct insights into the LISD situation, please post them here or send me an e-mail.