By Janine DavisRecord Staff WriterWarren County R-III leaders have approved a 2015-2016 calendar that continues the district’s recent emphasis to maximize instructional time.The 2015-2016 school year kicks off Thursday, Aug. 13, and ends on Wednesday, May 18.“The calendar is very similar to 2014-15,” R-III Superintendent Dr. Jim Chandler told the board during a presentation at the monthly board meeting last week.Chandler said the calendar for next year has 174 school days and 182 contracted days, with one extra professional development day from the current year. In the past two years, Chandler and his team have added four to five more instructional days to the calendar from previous years, which is consistent with other districts in the surrounding area.Chandler said administrators had worked through the calendar with its teachers association representatives.“The calendar process this year was pretty smooth, and we were all very comfortable with it,” Chandler told the board.Holidays incorporated into the calendar are Labor Day (Sept. 7), Fall Break (Oct. 23, adjacent to Parent Teacher conferences and no school Oct. 22), Thanksgiving (Nov. 25-27), Christmas (Dec. 21-Jan. 1), Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Jan 18), Presidents Day (Feb. 15), and Spring Break (March 21-25).Four professional development days are interspersed in the 2016 winter semester, and 17 two-hour early release days are planned for the first and third Wednesday of each month for teacher professional learning communities (PLC). The PLC time — which will double early release days next year — allows staff to share expertise and collaborate to improve teaching skills and improve student performance.District leaders say the current professional development scheme is a more productive alternative to the former calendar of eight full days of training, which leaders and teachers alike believed was too disruptive to student learning.“We feel like the current PLC process is working, and our principals and teachers requested additional time,” said Chandler. “They really felt like two more hours a month would benefit the district and allow more work to be accomplished each month. We have plenty of hours in our calendar to be able to do this.”The two-hour release PLC schedule allows students and teachers to get in nearly a full day on what otherwise would have been spent away from classroom instruction under the old system.“We all believe consistency in schedule is needed,” said Chandler.Board President Teresa Scott said her concern is that the time students have in class on early-release days be as productive as possible.Current class periods are 47 minutes, and on early release days this condenses to 31-44 minutes depending on the hour, said High School Principal Nick Heggemann, who said the only thing he feels is sacrificed with early release is time allotted in each class for students to work on homework.“In what I observe the majority of the time, the last 10 minutes of every classroom is kids get a chance to work independently, and that’s what we want them to do,” Heggemann said.Teachers association representative Bill Brown said he believes the time is being used more productively than in the past.“The kids are busier during those days; teachers are packing the material in and teaching ‘bell-to-bell,’ ” said Heggemann.The board approved the calendar in a 7-0 vote.R-III calendar