Wake County year-round schools will start in August. Some may also change calendars.
Wake County’s 40,000 multi-track year-round calendar students will start a month later than normal in August, and thousands of other year-round students could be forced to switch to a traditional calendar.
The Wake County school board approved revised 2020-21 school year calendars on Tuesday that move the first day of classes for multi-track and modified-calendar schools to Aug. 3. They won’t open in July as originally scheduled because of the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Also on Tuesday, the school board reviewed a proposal to move the single-track year-round schools to a traditional calendar for the 2020-21 school year. School officials blame the potential change, which could be approved June 16, on a recently approved state law that revises the definition of year-round schools.
Wake is lobbying legislators to revise the law.
“We have not abandoned hope that we can get some type of a correction or an option through legislative action that would permit us to move forward,” Superintendent Cathy Moore told school board members.
Since mid-April, Wake has temporarily suspended the use of the year-round calendar, in which students get periodic three-week breaks during the school year. Those students are using the traditional calendar to close out the school year.
Lawmakers changed definition of year-round schools
The problem facing Wake is that it uses two kinds of year-round calendars.
In the multi-track calendar, the students are split into four groups called tracks that follow their own schedules. This can increase the number of students who attend the school.
In the single-track calendar, all the students follow the same schedule.
The multi-track schools were scheduled to begin July 6. The delayed opening is leading to changes such as adding 15 minutes to the school day to ensure students meet state requirements for hours of instruction.
It’s also leading to the breaks being shortened to two-week vacations. Wake says it’s necessary to ensure that multi-track students will finish next school year in June.
But Wake says the revised state calendar law requires them to keep single- track schools on three-week breaks, as opposed to the multi-track schools. Wake is the only district in North Carolina that uses multi-track schools.
Wake hopes for legislative help
District staff say three-week breaks with an August start aren’t doable. As a result, they’re recommend going temporarily to the traditional calendar, which would have the single-track schools start Aug. 17.
The calendar law was changed as part of a package of coronavirus relief legislation approved in early May.
“We’ve been told it was an unintended or even unfortunate mistake,” said school board chairman Keith Sutton. “I’ve even heard it being referred to as a drafting error so we’re going to assume the best and that it was not intentional and hopefully we’ll be able to get a swift change to help us out.”
Wake informed the single-track families on Friday about the possible change. Parents have been vocal in complaining about the last-minute change.
“Our family is completely against this possible sudden calendar change and I am highly offended at how it could go down and be played out so quickly during these already scary and challenging times,” Christy Pruden, a parent, posted Tuesday on Wake’s discussion forum.
