The Butler School District sits on the verge of a revamped school calendar after weeks of gathering community and faculty input and a round of school board discussion Monday night.

It doesn’t look very different from the old one.

A sample calendar Superintendent Brian White offered the board still had students returning from summer break for a few days before Labor Day. They would still get less than two full weeks off for Christmas. And classes would still cease for the year on June 5. White said he’ll check and finalize the calendar for a first vote at the board’s Nov. 19 meeting.

“I think you could look at the numbers and comments and try and justify just about anything you wanted,” White said. “But there clearly were themes that came out when you read through the comments.”

Snow makeup days are designated in the new plan, a suggestion White said was common among parents. In the sample calendar, they’re scheduled for April 9 and 14. If unneeded, they would extend the weekend’s spring break.

Teachers reported that starting before Labor Day helps students adjust to returning to class. Earlier starts and front-loading of the year helps accomplish another teacher request as well: getting in as much instructional time before standardized test season as possible.

“The reality is that for our principals and teachers, testing is a part of their evaluation,” White said.

Parents wrote in saying extra vacation days that aren’t connected to holidays can make it difficult to manage child care. That’s why White shied away from a lengthened Christmas break. However, a day off was added on March 22 to appease parents asking for a break in the long end-of-school-year holiday drought.

The main takeaway from calendar surveys, White said, was that parents do not agree among themselves how the calendar should look.

“It’s not going to tick everyone’s boxes,” White said. “But it can’t.”

Near the end of the meeting, board member Gary Shingleton asked whether the district ought to be making school bus safety a larger priority.

“We talk optimizing,” Shingleton said. “Efficiency. Why isn’t safety the number one item?”

Shingleton said he’d recently spoken to at least one bus driver about what changes to their own route they might like to see. He suggested the district ask drivers in a systematic way to see if some route changes ought to be made.

His comments, he said, were in reference to school bus related accidents around the nation lately. Three children were killed in Indiana last Tuesday while they were about to board a pickup truck, various Indiana media have reported.

Suzie Bradrick, another board member, suggested that board and community members ought to lobby local representatives to make school bus safety a political issue.

“We could have cameras on buses,” Bradrick said. “We could catch people in the act. It’s as simple as catching someone’s license plate.”

White appeared bothered by Shingleton’s unscheduled remarks.

“I thought we all agreed no surprises at board meetings,” White said. “I’m not prepared for this discussion.”

He said he would put the discussion on the next meeting’s agenda.

At an October meeting, the school district took input on several building management plans. One potential plan maintains current buildings as they are, but the others are various means of closing Butler’s downtown middle school building.

Seven more similar meetings are planned this month. All are open to students, faculty and parents from any of the district’s schools.

They’ll include a few more options than the first meeting, White explained Monday. Three new options based off community input from the first meeting will be available for comments and voting at the upcoming meetings.

The seven additional meetings are from 4 to 5:30 p.m. Nov. 6 at McQuistion Elementary, 4 to 5:30 p.m. Nov. 13 from Center Township Elementary, 6:30 to 8 p.m. Nov. 13 at Emily Brittain Elementary, 2:30 to 4 p.m. Nov. 14 at Summit Elementary, 6 to 7:30 p.m. Nov. 14 at Butler Middle School, 4 to 5:30 p.m. Nov. 15 at Northwest Elementary and 6:30 to 8 p.m. Nov. 15 at Connoquenessing Elementary.