The next school year will start earlier and end later for Covington County School students.

On Tuesday, school board members were presented with three options for the 2014-2015 calendar and approved one requires students to begin class on Aug. 18. The school year would end on May 28, and it would give students a full week of Thanksgiving vacation.

Superintendent Shannon Driver said the new calendar is similar to that of the current school year.

“This calendar runs through all of May; it gives a week at Thanksgiving; two weeks at Christmas; and spring break coincides with the other local systems,” Driver said. “For some reason, our teachers like to start later and finish late. They also like that week at Thanksgiving.”

The calendar also gives long weekends in October and February, as well as a holiday in nearly every month.

“This calendar got good comments from everyone,” he said. “We did what we could to break up some of those long months, which we’ve not had the ability to do for a while.”

Spring break is scheduled for March 30-April 2, 2015.

This calendar provides for 176 days of instructional time for students and 187 days for teachers.

In other business, the board approved the following personnel changes:

• employed Ronald E. Floyd as math teacher at Florala High School;

• extended medical leave with benefits to Carolyn King, bus driver at Red Level High School; and,

• employed Anna B. Watson as lunchroom worker at RLHS.