SCARBOROUGH — The last student day of school for Scarborough’s 2019-2020 year will be Wednesday, June 10.

The Board of Education approved a proposal Superintendent Sanford Prince brought forward that also makes June 12 the final staff day and moves four workshop days, previously scheduled from June 15-18, to Aug 25-28.

“We anticipate some changes, given what we’re going through with how school needs to be done,” said Prince. “It’s sort of the unknown right now, but we know that we’re going to have some training for our staff, have to look at some type of social distancing, hygiene protocols will need to be a priority. Certainly, our nursing staff will have some in service opportunities for us. So we just felt those four days will be useful for staff.”

Most districts in Cumberland County are letting students out in early June, said Sanford.

“Probably what’s a little more different is the four floating days and putting them into August,” he said.

“It would be nice for (teachers) to have some time to get their classrooms up and running because they really haven’t had that time in the spring,” he added.

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Assistant Superintendent Diane Nadeau said that administration has been mindful of getting staff input regarding the floating days in August.

“I think that was a recommendation that state had floated out to us in regards to being mindful of the time that teachers may need in the fall as we move on to the next stage of learning as it relates to the pandemic we’ve been experiencing,” she said. “We have met and discussed this with the Scarborough Education Association.”

The board also approved to change May 22, which had been scheduled to be a teacher’s workshop day, into a regular student day, as teachers cannot meet face-to-face.

“During our conversation there was a request on a part of the SEA to first be floated sometime in the summer for teachers to engage independent work or work with their peers at an independently designated time,” said Nadeau.

Two concerns involving the unknown state of schools in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic prevented the decision to give staff the option to choose when they could visit their classrooms over the summer to prepare for the fall, she said.

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