By JOYANNA LOVE/ Senior Staff Writer

The Chilton County Board of Education approved the 2017-2018 School Calendar during its Feb. 21 meeting.

Superintendent Tommy Glasscock said the calendar adds six professional development days for teachers.

“We did quite a bit of research in looking at other counties. One of the things we found impressive in Autauga County… is it gives our students six additional days out of school going in to next year, but it gives us those six days to have time with our teachers to get PD training for them,” Glasscock said.

Teacher in-service will be Aug. 1 to Aug. 4 and Aug. 7 to Aug. 8. The first day of school will be Aug. 9.

The last of day of school will be May 25.

There have been additional training requirements in recent years due to the passage of Erin’s Law and the Jason Flatt Act. Glasscock said these changes in the school calendar will allow teachers to receive this training as a group, rather than the school system paying for teachers to attend trainings. In the past, Erin’s law training had cost $12,000.

Board member Pam Price asked if seventh and eighth grade students would be on the same schedule as the 2016-2017 school year, in which they did not attend the same classes every day. Price said only Clanton Middle School students attend every class subject each day.

“We really need to look at that for our seventh and eighth graders to go to math every day,” Price said.

Glassock said he had not been aware that these grades were following an A/B schedule, and would discuss it with the principals in his meeting with them on Feb. 22.

The calendar needed to be adopted, Glasscock said, because collective conferencing was about to begin, and because the person who sets up the class schedules was going to start working on it on Feb. 27.

On the financial front, the school board received the report for December and preliminary numbers for January. The board approved a plan to finance the recent purchase of school buses. The buses were paid for out of the general fund and the money is being borrowed to pay it back.

Also during the meeting, the board approved:

– Changing contracted positions in the special education department to part-time employee positions.

– Hiring Jessie Hucks for a Clanton bus route and Tara Baker as an Access facilitator.

– Summer credit recovery and summer driving school programs.

– Funding to schools for textbooks.