School System Publishes 2018-2019 School Calendar and Looks Ahead to Next School Year

Students and parents may be thinking about the end of school this June, and the beginning of summer vacation, but the school district is already preparing the next school year. As it released its calendar for the 2018-2019 school year, the Consolidated School District of New Britain wants to let people know about upcoming educational strategies that it is implementing.

“We are very excited about the start of the 2018-2019 school year,” said schools Superintendent Nancy Sarra. “With the increasing demands for our students to be career ready for the 21st century, we have begun the work of transforming our current curriculum to better meet the needs of all students.”

Sarra added that, “In addition to the curriculum work, we have conducted an in-depth analysis of how current resources are being used, and most importantly, determined a more efficient and effective way to utilize these resources for improved student outcomes.”

Emphasizing career readiness in education, Sarra said, “The shift in our curriculum will afford all New Britain students these enrichment opportunities through S.T.E.A.M Labs (Science-Technology-Engineering-Arts-Mathematics) at all levels as well as Career Technical Education experiences at our secondary schools.”

“This will give more opportunities for our students to acquire literacy in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” Sarra said.

The school district say that, for students in kindergarten through the eighth grade, student’s academic year will be divided into trimesters rather than quarters, with, “student-led report card conferences occurring in early December and April.” For high school students, report cards and conferences will continue to be by quarters. “This shift will support the district’s focus on 12-16 weeks of daily instruction either in the arts, physical health and wellness, S.T.E.A.M as well as Career Advisory at the secondary level,” said the school district.

“Due to this shift in the curriculum,” said Sarra, “we are eliminating the traditional student half-days each month. We need all of our students to be in school every day for full days of learning. This will increase learning time for all students by at least fifty hours. That is a significant amount of time our students will be gaining back for learning.”

There will be half days on first two days of school, August 30, 2018 and August 31st. Those two days fall before the Labor Day weekend, so there will be no classes on September 3rd, which is Labor Day. September 4th will be the first full day of school.

Winter break for the next school year is scheduled for December 21, 2018 to January 1, 2019 and Spring break is scheduled for April 15, 2019 to April 22, 2019.

The tentative date for the last day of school for the 2018-2019 school year is June 12, 2019. High school graduation for the Class of 2019 has been scheduled for June 13, 2019.