I am writing to make you aware of a change to our school calendar for the 2019-2020 school year that I will be asking our Board of Education to approve. This proposed change comes as the result of the recent passing of Election Law 3-110 by the New York State Legislature. This new legislation now will require school districts to provide school employees paid time off to vote. While this new law is designed to ensure that everyone has the ability to exercise their right to vote, it also has the potential to create issues that may hamper our efforts to provide students with a normal academic school day. It is our goal to ensure that we are in compliance with the law while also ensuring that our compliance has no negative or unforeseen impacts on the student instructional day. To ensure that our obligation is met, with no impact to student instruction, we will be designating November 5, 2019 (Election Day) a vacation day for students, faculty and support staff and Friday, May 22, 2020 will now be a regular school day.
This calendar change will enable us to meet the new voting regulations with no disruption to the instructional day for students while still ensuring we meet the required number of days and instructional school hours required by the state.
I apologize for any inconvenience this change may have caused and appreciate your understanding given the recent changes which now afford employees paid time off for voting. If you have any questions or need any clarification on this change please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,
Andrew Doell