Whether final exams conclude before Winter Break for the next two years depends on a vote of all PUSD teachers that will occur no later than the second week of November. Teachers will choose from a minimum of four distinct school year calendars, one of which mirrors the current calendar, to implement for 2016-2017 and 2017-2018, superintendent Randall Booker said.

To finish the first semester by Winter Break, Site Council, which includes representatives from each PUSD school, and the Calendar Committee are considering a calendar that starts and ends a week earlier than the current school year does. Another possibility maintains the current calendar’s start and end times, but moves finals up before Winter Break, cutting the first semester short. The second semester would start after returning from Winter Break and last 2 weeks longer.

Students can express which calendar features they favor and why on a survey Booker emailed to them, the results of which the Calendar Committee will have access to. This survey closes on Oct. 6.

One choice to make is whether finals should happen before Winter Break.

The time between when students learn material and get tested on it would decrease if teachers vote to move finals before break, said Calendar Committee chair and social studies teacher Alli Cota, who could not remember a time in her 20 years teaching at PHS in which finals ended before vacation.

“For teachers, it creates challenges of wrapping up a semester right before break, certainly,” Cota said. “But I just really think that there’s a lot of merit to that on behalf of students.”

PHS senior and Site Council member Chris Machle said that students could enjoy a better vacation if they could do so without preparing for finals.

“Even when we have Winter Break before finals, those two weeks leading up to it are always crazy with essays and projects,” Machle said.

Most of the opposition to ending the first semester before Winter Break that Machle has heard comes from non-PHS parents, students and teachers at Site Council meetings, he said.

“With the elementary schools and even the middle schools to some extent, there either are no finals, or they’re not super important,” Machle said.

Changing the calendar may cause conflicts with winter sports and extracurriculars, Machle said, but taking finals before break would make playing sports easier for him.

As for specific ways to finish finals before the holidays, positive and negative consequences exist for each approach.

Assistant principal Eric Mapes said that choosing a calendar starting and ending earlier would shorten the 2016 summer break by around a week. The administration would have to finish the planner, master scheduling, facilities maintenance, walk-through registration and other preparations faster, he said.

“Every week counts,” Mapes said.

Results of the survey Booker circulated show that a majority of respondents, even those with elementary school children on a trimester system, expressed that they wanted finals before winter break. However, less people were willing to start school earlier, Booker said.

“I’m not seeing the desire to make the concessions necessary to make that happen,” Booker said.

Perks of an earlier first day of school could include allowing for more time in AP classes to cover material before the exams in May and limiteding summer homework, both Mapes and Machle said.

On the other hand, if PUSD were to begin and end school the way it does currently and complete finals before Winter Break, more time would fall to the second semester, complicating the way teachers with semester classes teach, Cota said.

“Although I don’t teach a semester class, I think for [teachers] that do it’s really important not to have a large imbalance between the two semesters,” Cota said.

Booker said he does not support a calendar with uneven semesters.

“People are kind of mixed on that, I think primarily because they don’t understand the  implications of an imbalanced semester load,” Booker said. “You can’t have Economics first semester ten instructional days less than Economics second semester.”

Still, Machle said that taking finals before Winter Break would outweigh the costs of uneven semesters.

While weighing the options ahead of them, students and adults should both consider which calendar most supports students’ learning above anything else, Cota said.

Mapes agreed, saying that he will prioritize the wellbeing of students regardless of the teachers’ choice.

“In the end, you have to feel comfortable with your decision,” Mapes said. “You also have to be okay if you don’t get your way.”