A hybrid school calendar has been approved by the Dublin ISD School Board for the 2024-25 school year.
Much like this year, Dublin students and teachers will see many Mondays off essentially sprinkling four day weeks throughout the year.
School will begin Thursday, Aug. 8 and end May 22, 2025 with graduation being held May 23, 2025.
Mondays off for next year include Aug. 19, Sept. 2, Sept. 23, Oct. 14 and Oct. 28, Jan. 20, Feb. 3 and Feb. 17, and Friday, April 18. Students will get five days off for Thanksgiving – Nov. 25-29; three weeks off for Christmas Dec. 23-Jan. 10, 2025 and a week off for spring break: March 17-21, 2025.
Included bad weather days are Friday, Feb. 14, 2025, and Friday, March 14, 2025.
The school board also heard from Erath Chief Appraiser Jonathan Pringle about property values.
Pringle explained that the state requires the appraisal district to appraise at 100% of the market value, within a 5% margin.
Pringle told Dublin ISD they appraised at 95.6%.
“It’s too low and too close for comfort,” he said.
Pringle cited an extreme amount of influx in Erath County as having a drastic impact on smaller markets, like Dublin, and said most likely they are looking at the same kind of increase as was seen last year.
Pringle also addressed the Legislature increasing the homestead value from $40,000 to $100,000 after school districts had already set their fiscal year budget last year. For Dublin ISD, the homestead exemption increase significantly impacted the district.
“Kudos to you guys,” Pringle said. “I know the appraisal numbers changed drastically. That’s $60,000 per house that you guys don’t get to account for.”
Pringle said the same kind of issues with property values is happening all across the state.
“You can’t buy a starter home for less than $200 a square foot,” he said. “We’renavigatingunknown waters. I wouldn’t be surprised in the next legislative session if we see something to impact us again.”
Pringle said that increasing the values wasn’t his choice and it wasn’t the school district’s choice either.
In other business, the school district was approved for the National School Lunch program so all students will receive free lunches next school year.
There were also zero negative findings on the school’s safety audit, Superintendent Melissa Summers said.