(909) 989-5511
Superintendent's Message

Over the past five years, the Chaffey Joint Union High School District has been looking at ways to increase instructional time for students. We tend to lose time during the month of January each year. First semester is currently completed at the end of January. With the way the calendar falls, we return to school the week after New Year's, review as to where the students were prior to the Winter Break, have Martin Luther King's Birthday Holiday, review for finals and then administer final exams. By the time actual instruction of new material takes place, we are almost in the month of February. To prevent this from happening to students, the Chaffey District has moved the start of school to the second week in August starting in 2009.

When we begin school the second week of August, first semester will conclude prior to Winter Break. The last three days before the break will be finals. Students will be free of homework or projects during the break and the new semester will begin as the students return. Beginning the school year earlier has additional benefits. Students will have more instructional time before taking the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE) and students in the Advanced Placement classes will have additional time to get ready for those exams.

We realize there are potential negatives to this move as well. One that has come up is the heat during that time of year. As we saw this year, this is a variable. The temperature during the first and second weeks of August was cooler that the week before or after Labor Day. However, we do know this could be a problem and are addressing that with additional air conditioning on our campuses. This needed to be done whether or not we moved the start date of school. Another potential concern is the scheduling of vacation time for families. We are notifying you at this juncture, so that families will have plenty of time to schedule vacation time for the 2009 school year and beyond. The third potential problem is having students in more than one district wo will be on different schedules. The Chaffey District cannot dictate to other districts what their schedule will be. However, during this process over many years we have stayed in contact with our feeder districts and I am confident that most, if not all, will adopt the same schedule. At their last meeting the Etiwanda Elementary District Board of