District Closure Week and Spring Break

The Cowichan Valley School District is considering a change to the timing of the District Closure week that currently precedes Spring Break. We are surveying staff, parents, students, and the community to see if they would be in favour of changing the dates of the District Closure week.

Originally the District Closure week was scheduled from Monday, March 8th to Friday, March 12th which precedes Spring Break: March 15th to 19th (which is always the 3rd week of March, as per the Teachers' collective agreement).  In this configuration our district is out of sync from neighbouring districts' Spring Break and Closure weeks which are March 15th to 26th (Sooke, Greater Victoria, Nanaimo-Ladysmith).  This year with the provincial response to COVID-19 it became apparent that our school district was not aligned with 56 other school districts in the province.  With COVID-19 continuing to be an issue throughout the next 12 months, it will allow the Cowichan Valley School District to be better positioned to respond, along with our provincial counterparts, if our District Closure week and Spring Break dates aligned with the other school districts.

On Tuesday, June 2, the Board of Education passed the following motion requesting staff enter into the thirty-day consultation period to amend the 2020/21 school calendar.

The full motion reads:

School Calendar 2020-2021

"That the Board of Education of School District No. 79 (Cowichan Valley) enters into a 30-day consultation period prior to amending the 2020-2021 school calendar to change the school district closure week from March 8th-12th to March 22nd-26th."