The 2022-23 school year may not be over yet, but the Board has been hard at work hammering out the calendar for the 2023-24 school year. Calendar deliberations involve much more than members of the Board of Education sitting around the boardroom table and penciling in non-student days and holidays. Staff, School Community Councils, Horizon Teachers’ Association, and the Canadian Union of Public Employees are each consulted during the process and collaborate to develop the calendar for the upcoming school year. “We are pleased to offer a school year calendar that will allow our students, staff, and school communities to prosper. We greatly value our partnerships with the Horizon Teachers' Association, CUPE, School Community Councils, and Horizon staff, and thank our stakeholders for their willingness to support the calendar process,” said Jim Hack, Board Chair. In a media release, Kevin C. Garinger, Director of Education, expressed his gratitude to the Board for always “committing to a process that ensures the value of stakeholder's voice”.

Horizon School Division No. 205 operates 43 schools in communities across east-central Saskatchewan which includes the Wakaw, Cudworth, and Bruno schools. Students start the new school year on Tuesday, September 5 while teachers and the rest of the staff will be back at it a week prior on August 28. The 2023-24 Horizon School Division school year is comprised of 178 instructional days out of 195 operational days, leaving 17 non-instructional days. Non-instructional days constitute less than 10 % of the operational days and include days set aside for conferences and collaborative learning. The 325 minutes daily of instructional time remains unchanged from last year and that amount over a period of 178 days results in 964.17 instructional hours which exceeds the mandatory minimum required by the Ministry of Education.

A teachers’ conference on Thursday, November 9th will give students a five-day weekend at Remembrance Day, with classes resuming on Tuesday, November 14th. The first day of Christmas Break will be Friday, December 22 and students will not return to classes until January 8th, 2024. A ‘Personal Professional Day’ for teachers will give the students an extra day during the Christmas Break as well as during the Winter Break in February. The Winter Break coincides with Family Day in Saskatchewan and runs for the rest of the February 19-23 week. The scheduling of the Personal Professional Day for Monday, February 26th means students will have one more morning to sleep in before returning to classes on February 27th. Similarly, the Easter Break will be extended one day. The placement of these professional days replicates the 2022-23 calendar so parents will be able to plan accordingly.

Carol Baldwin, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Wakaw Recorder