By JESSICA BRICKER
The Bluffton-Harrison Metropolitan School District will seek a “flexibility waiver” from the Indiana State Board of Education to reduce the number of instructional days by three.
At its meeting this month, the school district’s board of trustees approved a resolution recommended by Superintendent Brad Yates that will go to the state for consideration for implementation next school year. The resolution would allow the district to eliminate two scheduled eLearning days now in the school calendar — one in September and one in November — to provide additional professional development for faculty and staff, Yates said. A third day would be carved out in March at the end of the district’s third term.
The three days would be used only for professional development and not student instruction, the school board learned.
The recommendation was born out of planning with the district’s educational leadership team and the Bluffton-Harrison Teachers Association, Yates said. While Indiana code requires school corporations to have at least 180 student instructional days, “each existing instructional day surpasses the required minimum number of instructional minutes for a school day.”
Also, Yates added, the Indiana General Assembly enacted a law in 2020 “allowing school corporations the opportunity to seek flexibility waivers to transform student learning at the local level.”
jessica@news-banner.com
