Unlike most schools in the Raccoon Valley Radio listening area, the Adel-DeSoto-Minburn School District won’t start classes until Monday, August 26th.

Superintendent Greg Dufoe says the teachers and staff are taking advantage of the small amount of extra preparation time to make sure they are ready to welcome back the students. He points out that one aspect of the pre-service work being done involves “Professional Learning Communities,” (PLC’s). Dufoe says through breakout sessions this summer, teams have identified road blocks to collaboration, particularly when it comes to what they call “smart goals.” “Really it’s about putting our teachers in teams in which they collaborate, and the whole end goal is student learning. So we’ve kind of revamped what we’re asking our teachers to do in those teams. We’ll delay the implementation of ‘smart goals’ at the team level until we can do a better job of analyzing multiple data sets and get those to those teams, so they can find areas of focus that will affect student learning the most. So that’s really the gap that we’ve identified, and we’re going to get much better, and we’re going to try to do that this year.”

Some important dates for ADM this school year include: winter break from December 21st through January 1st; spring break from March 13-22; and the anticipated last day of school on May 29th. Dufoe also reminds parents and students that every Friday during the year will have an early dismissal time of 2 p.m.