First day of school will be PA Day for 110,000 Middlesex County-area students

Better check your back-to-school calendar.

The London-area’s roughly 110,000 kids will start a day later than expected next month, with teachers taking the first day of the new academic year as a professional activity day.

Instead of heading back to class the first Tuesday after Labor Day, students in the area’s two major school systems will go back on Wednesday, Sept. 6. Their teachers spend the first day on one of seven PA days they get annually.

Craig Smith is president of the Thames Valley district of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario. He said he doesn’t remember the last time the first day of school started on a Wednesday, other than last year when the province mandated the first day be spent in COVID-related learning.

But at a prior Thames Valley District school board meeting, associate director Linda Nicholls said it isn’t the first time the first day of school was pushed back one day. “It happens about every five years. It’s a real cycle.”

Smith said contract language limits the number of PA days a school board can have before Labor Day if the school year – from September to June – allows for 194 school days.

“(The PA day) could be somewhere else but (the boards) have chosen to put it there,” Smith said.

But Mark Fisher, education director for the Thames Valley board, has said there are many reasons to have a PA day to open the school year.

“Either we don’t have (one) at all before the school year starts or we place it on the first day,” he said earlier this year, adding it gives school staff a chance “to get together before the school year starts. ”

Earlier this year Thames Valley trustee Sherri Moore questioned board administration about the extra day off, saying she was concerned about parental feedback. “I’m anticipating that it will be very inconvenient for parents.”

Thames Valley board officials have said they’ve received no blowback. Smith, the union leader, said the same. “I haven’t heard any complaints in that regard,” he said.

Mark Adkinson is spokesperson for the London District Catholic school board. He said the agenda for their Sept. 5 PA day includes “all mandatory health and safety training, as well as a school-based focus on learning priorities.”

Ontario, under legislation giving its education minister more control over school boards, moved recently to require boards to publicly post details of their professional development sessions in a push to focus the boards on academic achievement and job skills.

Besides Sept. 5, according to the Thames Valley board’s calendar there are seven professional activity days this year on Oct. 6, Nov. 17, Feb. 2, April 19, May 31 and June 28, the last day of school.

[email protected]

twitter.com/HeatheratLFP