The long-awaited final calendar for the MCPS 2019-2020 school year has officially been released. The official calendar sees Montgomery County students beginning school on Tuesday, September 3rd, and finishing on Monday, June 15th.

The Policy Management Committee first met in July of this year to discuss the upcoming school year calendar. On September 13, 2018, the committee was given two different proposals for the 2019-20 school year. One key element of consideration for any school calendar are breaks, especially spring break.

The yearly MCPS calendar is no different as it works to satisfy the needs of a variety of groups as well as satisfy instructional needs. For the 2019-20 proposals, the first scenario calls for a 10-day spring break, while the second scenario cuts spring break to only 6 days, which is the same as the current 2018-19 calendar.

However, the Board did not act alone in coming to a decision on a school calendar. According to the MCPS Public Announcements section of their website, the process actually began on November 14, 2017, when the school board voted unanimously to “request that the school system conduct a comprehensive calendar survey of staff, parents/guardians, and the community regarding their desired operational closures for use in developing the 2019–2020 calendar.”

The county then, according to a press release explaining the process, “…took the unprecedented step to survey and communicate individually with every staff member and family in the MCPS community. On May 1, 2018, the survey launched with nearly 190,000 e-mail invitations and more than 19,000 postcard invitations sent to staff and families.” This enabled members of the MCPS community to have a strong say in the calendars that would be presented to the committee.

The results of the survey and the development effort ultimately became the two proposed calendars that the committee took into consideration. After much debate, the committee made their final choice of scenario one as they felt that it fit the county’s needs more effectively. Of course, one key element to any school calendar in Maryland is Governor Larry Hogan’s Executive Order from 2016 that mandates schools begin after Labor Day and end no later than June 15th, which MCPS adhered to in both proposals.