According to the calendar set by the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, better known as BOCES, a number of districts that partner with the organization are back to school this week. Others, such as Fredonia and Dunkirk, remain on a two-week break until Monday.

Deciding to go against that BOCES calendar used to be a bitter battle. Now, districts are allowed — for the most part — to decide on their own with little pushback.

It was a topic of discussion before the break in Fredonia late last month. Officials there said the break helps with the learning process.

“When I talk with teachers at either Wheelock or the Elementary School … one of the things they come back to is, from winter break to spring break is the time of year they make the most progress, because generally, they have large periods of uninterrupted time. They feel like students really get in a groove,” said Superintendent Brad Zilliox. “As one teacher said to me, ‘That’s when we put the hay in the barn.’ … If you put a week in the middle of that, that disrupts that energy that builds over that period of time.”

But one of the reasons there are 18 school districts in Chautauqua County goes back to a premise that came up years ago. We cannot begin to consider merging schools — or sharing services — without a common bell schedule.

That still cannot happen until all districts follow the same calendar. To those looking in from the outside, it makes so much sense.