For several years, the Deer Valley District has given the first Wednesday of February off to students.

According to Nicole Duquette, assistant principal, students get this day off because it’s a professional development day for the staff.

“Each school designs the professional development needs for their specific schools and we submit our agendas to the district office,” Duquette said.

The Governing Board is responsible for scheduling this development day on Wednesday. It’s unknown why they chose for it to be in the middle of the week.

“Each year the district calendar committee makes proposals and these are approved by the Governing Board,” Duquette said. “The district office is the one to set the day of the week, the number of half days, and the February full day.”

All staff, including teachers and security, had to work a full day on Wednesday.

“The classified staff received professional development related to customer service. The teachers selected four specific sessions to attend based on their needs and we had a guest speaker on leadership,” Duquette said.

According to the professional development day agenda, there were over 32 different courses in these four sessions that the staff needed to attend.

The agenda said that their objective for this development day is to deploy a guaranteed and viable curriculum in every classroom.