St Joseph School District students will have fewer, slightly longer school days, under the new calendar adopted by the School Board Monday.
Students will attend classes on 167 instructional days. Those days will include 21 additional minutes of teaching time.
That adds up to 20 more hours of instructional time by the end of the year.
Also: no more half-days!
Students will get the entire day off on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
The new calendar increases the number of inclement-weather days built in to the schedule to ten.
Teachers will have ten professional development days, which will allow a similar amount of professional development hours as the current calendar.
Instead of taking place on early out days, professional development will occur before school starts in the fall, and about one day a month throughout the school year.
Another change involves the schedule of graduation ceremonies at the end of the year. The ceremonies will be held during the week, with a separate ceremony for each school.
Officials hope to allow a special night entirely devoted to each high school.