The Board of Education of Anne Arundel County will consider a change to the 2015-2016 school year calendar that would build in a day for parent-teacher conferences in the third marking period at its next meeting, scheduled for 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 6, 2015. The meeting will be held in the Board Room at the Parham Building, located at 2644 Riva Road in Annapolis.
The change would be the first step toward creating parent-teacher conferences in each marking period in future calendars, something Superintendent George Arlotto views as critical to enhancing engagement and collaboration between schools, students, and parents.
“I believe it is very important that we create more avenues for connections that will increase student achievement, and involving parents on a more regular basis is certainly one of those avenues,” Dr. Arlotto said.
The proposed calendar would maintain parent-teacher conference days on the Monday and Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but create time for all secondary schools to hold conferences on those days as well as elementary schools. It would add Monday, February 22, 2016, as a third day for parent-teacher conferences at all schools.
To accomplish this, the end of the school year would be moved back one day, to Friday, June 17, 2016.
The calendar would continue to build in five days for inclement weather closings. Should any more than five days be needed, Dr. Arlotto would discuss a potential waiver with the Maryland State Department of Education before making a decision on using specific days during Easter/Spring break as makeup days.
The proposed calendar also changes the date on which schools are closed for the 2016 primary election from Tuesday, April 5, 2016, to Tuesday, April 26, 2016, to accommodate the election date change made by the General Assembly.
The Board will meet on Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. to vote to go into closed session, during which time it will discuss confidential matters as permitted by the Maryland Open Meetings Act including, but not limited to, legal advice, personnel, and negotiations. Closed session is not open to the public. The general session of the meeting, which is open to the public, will begin at 10 a.m.
A complete agenda for the meeting accompanies this news release. More information on agenda items will be posted on the AACPS website in the Board Docs section under the Board of Education tab.
The general session of Wednesday’s Board meeting will be broadcast live on AACPS-TV, which can be found on Channel 96 on Comcast and Broadstripe, and Channel 36 on Verizon. High definition broadcasts can be seen on Channel 996 on Comcast and Channel 496 on Broadstripe. Rebroadcasts are scheduled for 7:00 p.m. the day after the meeting and 2:00 p.m. on subsequent Sundays.
The meeting can also be viewed live on the Internet here.
Archived videos of Board meetings can be found online here.