It’s official: Miami-Dade School Board approves 2020-21 calendar with later start date
Mark your calendars, parents, students and staff of Miami-Dade County Public Schools: The first day of school will be Aug. 24, 2020. The last day of school will be June 9, 2021.
After much ado, the School Board unanimously approved the second incarnation of the 2020-21 calendar, which was bundled with other proposals at Wednesday’s board meeting. This version was presented to board members during committee meetings last week to little discussion.
Board members in November objected to the original draft calendar, claiming the start date was too early and lamenting that the version that had Thanksgiving week off for students was not selected by surveyed teachers. That delayed the calendar significantly. The United Teachers of Dade accused the district of trying to circumvent the standard process of selecting a calendar.
This time around, UTD surveyed teachers on which week they preferred to have Spring Break. The calendar that had Spring Break during the last week of March won by a close margin: 1,087 to 926. That’s the calendar the School Board approved Wednesday.
The latter group of teachers preferred having Spring Break the second-to-last week in March, in line with Broward County Public Schools’ calendar. A quarter of Miami-Dade’s workforce commutes from Broward.
In this survey, 1,234 teachers overwhelmingly favored the later Aug. 24 start date compared to 369 who preferred the past Aug. 17 start date; 410 teachers said either option was fine.
Board member Mari Tere Rojas, who objected to the earlier start date, said she was pleased with this draft.
“I fully support it,” Rojas said Feb. 5. “I’m very happy to see this new calendar with a different start date and ending date.”
UTD noted on its website that it has already requested a jump start on the 2021-22 calendar so the ad-hoc school calendar committee can finalize a calendar prior to Broward and “hopefully avoid future conflicts between the counties regarding Spring Break.”
This story was originally published February 12, 2020 at 7:16 PM.