The Dawson County Board of Education voted on and unanimously approved the adoption of the final draft of next year's school calendar during the Dec. 5 meeting.

Superintendent Damon Gibbs explained that there were three drafts of the calendar that were given to the teacher forum groups. They were asked to take the drafts to their schools and have staff vote on which calendar they preferred.

"We had three drafts, two of which had a full week of fall break and one that did not and what they found out pretty quickly is when you put a full break in you have to start earlier and go later because we still go to school 180 days," Gibbs said at the meeting.

The 2017-2018 calendar for the school system has a school start date of Aug. 3, 2017 which is a Thursday. This past year school began on a Friday.

There are 180 school days for students and 190 days for staff.

The new calendar also shows fall break coming at the end of September rather than near the middle of October like this school year. The dates are Sept. 28-29.

Christmas vacation for students will begin on an early release day, Dec. 15, and students will return to school on Jan. 4 which is a Thursday in 2018.

Spring break will be the traditional first week in April. Students will be off from April 2 until April 10.

The last day of school in the spring of 2018 will be on May 25.