Three more Wake County schools could change calendars in 2019

Three Wake County schools could change their calendars next year, causing thousands of students in North Raleigh and eastern Wake to have to adjust to new opening and closing dates for the school year.

Wake County school administrators are considering changing the type of year-round schedule offered at Durant Road middle and elementary schools in North Raleigh. School officials are also considering changing Knightdale High School’s calendar so that the school year begins three weeks earlier at the start of August.

With the changes potentially going into effect for the 2019-20 school year, some families are already bracing for the new schedule.

“Change is hard and so when you first hear it you’re initially a little bit surprised and a little bit, ‘Oh my gosh, what am I going to do?’” said Heather Goode, a parent at Durant Road Elementary. “But you have to change your mindset.

“There’s nothing you can do about it. You have to try to figure out how to make it the best opportunity for your child.”

The changes at Durant and Knightdale are separate from calendar changes that are proposed as part of the 2019-20 student enrollment plan. The assignment plan calls for converting East Cary Middle School from a year-round calendar to a traditional calendar and opening Parkside Elementary and Alston Ridge Middle as multi-track year-round schools.

The reasons vary for the Durant and Knightdale proposals.

School leaders are looking at moving Knightdale High from a traditional calendar, where school begins in late August and ends in early-June, to the early college calendar used at Wake Technical Community College. In an early college schedule, the school year begins in early August and ends in late May.

“The state of North Carolina has given Knightdale and other schools some flexibility in setting their calendars as a way to help improve student academic achievement,” Knightdale High says on its website about the proposed change.

School officials say the early college calendar will help students do better on fall semester final exams because they’ll be able to take the exams before going on winter break. The new calendar would also give students who would now begin the spring semester in early January more time to prepare for Advanced Placement exams in May.

It hasn’t been decided yet if administrators will recommend the change at Knightdale High, according to Matt Dees, a Wake County school spokesman. But he said staff plan to recommend that the school board approve the change for the Durant schools.

Both Durant schools operate on a multi-track year-round calendar in which students are split into four groups called tracks with three in session at most times. The proposal is to move them both to a single-track year-round calendar in which all students have the same schedule.

The main reason for the change is that Durant Middle doesn’t have enough students, even though the multi-track calendar is meant to increase how many students a school can hold.

Durant Middle used to have 1,300 students, but the enrollment has shrunk to 970 students after the opening of Pine Hollow and River Bend middle schools. Kristen Faircloth, Durant Middle’s principal, told parents at a PTA meeting this week that unless they have 1,300 students it’s hard to provide equal access to programs for all four tracks.

Faircloth said the school will be able to operate more efficiently if all the students are on track 4, which runs from late July to late June.

“This is not because I don’t want to be multi-track anymore,” Faircloth told parents. “Right now in our situation there are so many things that we can’t do because our numbers are low.”

Wake had 51 multi-track year-round schools in 2010. But as growth slowed, the number has been reduced to 36 schools. Some schools were converted to a traditional calendar or to the single-track year-round calendar proposed for Durant.

Faircloth said conversion of both schools would have to be a “package deal” because so many Durant Middle students come from Durant Elementary. If enrollment picks up in the future, Faircloth said both schools could be moved back to a multi-track calendar.

If the change is approved, families on tracks 1, 2 and 3 would go from starting the 2019-20 school year on July 9 to July 29. Families would also have to adjust to new times when they go on breaks during the school year.

Tracy Vander Meer said she supports the change because track 4 is closer to the traditional calendar that her oldest child will be on in high school when her other child is still at Durant Middle. But she’s especially happy that the Durant schools won’t be switching to the traditional calendar.

“I love year-round school,” Vander Meer said. “I’m just glad that they haven’t gone traditional. Honestly then would be the only time I’d consider homeschooling.”

Staff and families at the Durant schools weren’t notified about the potential change until last week. Goode, the Durant Elementary parent, says she feels frustrated that the school system isn’t giving families much of a choice on the issue.

“I wish that Wake County Public School System would have given parents the opportunity to provide some input,” Goode said.