Wake County school board approves 2017-18 calendars with caveat
Families and staff at Wake County’s traditional-calendar schools can begin making plans for the 2017-18 school year, but changes may lie ahead.
On Tuesday, the Wake County school board approved the 2017-18 calendars for traditional-calendar schools, year-round schools and modified-calendar schools. But board members are reserving the right to make changes for the 2017-18 school year if they can get the state’s permission to start traditional-calendar schools earlier in August.
During a joint meeting Tuesday, school board members urged the Wake legislative delegation to back giving the county flexibility under the state’s school calendar law. Under the law, traditional-calendar schools can’t start before the Monday closest to Aug. 26 or end later than the Friday closest to June 11.
“Legislators have thousands of bills that come before them and so they don’t always know the full details,” school board Chairman Tom Benton said in an interview Tuesday. “We were able to show them this morning the real effect of that legislation for these two calendar years. It’s compressing things.”
The board also approved Tuesday the 2016-17 calendars for the two leadership academies, the Wake STEM Early College and the schedule used by both the Wake Early College of Health and Science and the Vernon Malone College and Career Academy. The schedules are adopted much later for those schools because they have to wait until the calendars are set by the colleges with which they partner for their programs.
All the new calendars will eventually be posted online at www.wcpss.net/calendars.
But much of this year’s calendar discussion was over the impact of the state law.
Wake Deputy Superintendent Cathy Moore told the board on April 5 that the district is starting traditional-calendar schools on Aug. 28 and ending June 8, 2018. She said the majority of teacher workdays will be held before the first day of classes or after the last day of classes.
“We’re scrunched on both sides of the calendar, which limits our ability to use workdays during time when students are in,” Moore said.
The calendar law was passed in 2004 with the support of parents and the tourism industry over concerns about how summer break was being shortened by classes beginning earlier in August. But the calendar law has been opposed by school systems, which have asked for the law to be changed or for their individual districts to get flexibility.
Benton has asked staff how late Wake could revise the 2017-18 schedule if the calendar law was changed this year. Moore said that the board could change the calendar in August or September.
Moore reminded the board that the district normally approves school calendars this time of year “in order to provide parents a full year’s notice on when holidays and breaks will occur.”
T. Keung Hui: 919-829-4534, @nckhui
School board won’t change budget
Wake County school board members agreed Tuesday not to ask for more than Superintendent Jim Merrill’s proposed $1.5 billion operating budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year.
Board members had identified earlier this month $16 million in new items that could be added to the budget, including $7.2 million to restore five-day-a-week custodial service to all of the district’s schools. But adding any of those items would mean either cutting something else from the budget or adding to the $35.7 million funding increase that Merrill wants to request this year from the Wake County Board of Commissioners.
Board members said they’d leave the budget as is when they vote on it May 3.
This story was originally published April 19, 2016 at 7:14 PM with the headline "Wake County school board approves 2017-18 calendars with caveat."