Change in Valley school start date in works for fall 2022

Carson Valley schools will start two weeks later under a calendar endorsed by Douglas County School trustees on Tuesday.

School officials presented the results of a survey that said most parents would prefer to move the start of school to later in August.

With 2,161 people responding, 1,840 listed starting school later as their first or second option, with 1,336 saying the district should leave the calendar alone. A third option that would eliminate the October break and extend Thanksgiving, as well as aligning all school start dates attracted 1,146 first or second rankings.

The vast majority of respondents to the survey were Carson Valley parents, but there were 306 who said they were students. Only 34 residents identified themselves as not associated with the schools.

School started in the Valley on Aug. 9 this year, which is the earliest it has begun in more than a decade. School start dates for the Valley have been moving forward over the last decade.

School Board Trustee Carey Kangas expressed surprise that a majority were willing to see the school start date set back.

Between 2011 and 2015, school started later in August with classes beginning Aug. 17-20.

The implementation of the fall break around the Nevada Day holiday saw start dates move forward in the calendar few days, but it wasn’t until 2017 that it eased into the first half of August.

School didn’t start until Aug. 20, 2020, due to delays involving the coronavirus outbreak, but that was the exception.

If the new calendar was in effect this year, school would have started on Aug. 23, which is when the district’s Lake Tahoe schools started.

Those start dates have been aligned with schools in South Lake Tahoe due to sports and student schedules.

The trade-off is that school ends at the lake in mid-June and sometimes later depending on the number of snow days in a given year. This year Lake schools are at two and counting.

State law requires the district to conduct a certain number of days of instruction during a school year.