News Photo by Julie Goldberg From left to right, Alcona High School students Antavius Mikazes, Pierce Bilbey, Malcolm Dix, and teacher and Future Farmers of America adviser Connor Hubbard were recognized by the Alcona Community Schools Board of Education on Monday. The students recently competed in the State FFA Demonstration Contest and earned the second-place gold award while receiving their state FFA degrees.

LINCOLN — Though the 2019-20 school year is still months away, Alcona Community Schools is already thinking about it.

On Monday, the district’s Board of Education approved the Alcona Middle/High School curriculum guide and district master calendar for next school year.

Superintendent Dan O’Connor said the curriculum guide was approved Monday so scheduling can begin in the next few weeks. He saidthat, in a perfect world, the guide would have been approved in February, but it was revised to have more options available for students.

“We’ll spend the next few weeks talking to staff and students and getting their interests and be able to plan our master schedule and that will then feed our building schedule, which will help us with the budget,” O’Connor said.

O’Connor said the earlier the 2019-20 master calendar is approved, the better off the district is. The e biggest change next school year will be that, instead of a three-day week the first week of school, the district will have a four-day week to align with Alpena Community College’s schedule.

“We have a large population of students that are dual-enrolled, so we want to make sure we’re not pulling them in different directions,” O’Connor said.

The first day of school is Aug. 26, with staff arriving the week before.

Instead of having parent-teacher conferences in the morning and evening on back-to-back days in November, the district will have just evening parent-teacher conferences on both days. O’Connor said turnout was higher in the evening last year, and nights seem to work better for families.

The district’s proposed winter break is a full two weeks, which is different from other districts within the Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District, but O’Connor said having two full weeks off works better for the district with how the days fall.

The last day of school is scheduled for June 4, 2020, but O’Connor said that is an extra day of instruction in case there are a lot of snow days next school year.

If the district doesn’t hit the six snow days it’s allowed by the state, the last day of school would then be June 3, 2020.

The district had more that twice that many snow days this school year.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.