Complying with NC calendar means both good news, bad news for Wake year-round schools
Thousands of Wake County students and their teachers will likely have a shorter summer break and a new schedule. But in return, they’ll get to keep their year-round calendar.
Wake County school administrators will recommend Tuesday changing the 2021-22 schedule for the 12 single-track year-round schools to make them comply with North Carolina’s school calendar law. Schedule changes would include starting the school year on July 20 instead of Aug. 2, as originally planned.
School officials say the alternative would be to switch those 12 schools to a traditional calendar — something not being recommended.
“I hope we can get this fixed sooner than later,” school board member Monika Johnson-Hostler said in an interview last week. “Teachers and parents need to plan for next year.”
Johnson-Hostler’s district includes most of the single-track schools: Barwell Road, Durant Road, Hodge Road, Lake Myra, Lockhart, Rand Road, Timber Drive, Vance, Walnut Creek and Wilburn elementary schools and Durant Road and North Garner middle schools.
The plan is to vote on the new schedule on May 4.
Year-round school types
In year-round schools, students get short breaks throughout the school year instead of a long summer vacation. Wake uses two kinds of year-round calendars.
In the multi-track year-round 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.. They’ve generally used track 4. Many of the single-track schools were converted from multi-track when their enrollment declined.
Due to the COVID pandemic, Wake had the multi-track schools use the single-track calendar. But Wake is tentatively planning to have those schools back on the multi-track schedule next school year.
Last year, state lawmakers adopted a definition for year-round schools that school officials say has created problems.
Multi-track schools are safe because the calendar law includes year-round schools that are split into four groups with staggered schedules.
Single-track schools would qualify under state law if students are scheduled to attend on a calendar of 45 days of classes followed by 15 days of vacation throughout the school year. But track 4 doesn’t follow exactly that pattern.
In response, state lawmakers passed legislation modifying the wording so that single-track schools could have an average of 44 to 46 days of classes and an average of 15 to 20 days per break. But that exception only applied to this current school year.
New single-track schedule
Lawmakers haven’t approved a similar fix for next school year. School administrators say the choices are to create a new single-track schedule or convert the schools to traditional calendar.
Under the new proposed schedule, the single-track schools will start two weeks earlier than track 4. The school year would also end two weeks earlier on June 14.
The new schedule means breaks will overlap but not align with track 4. This could crease scheduling problems for single-track families who also have children attending multi-track schools.
The new schedule means the breaks would also be different, which could cause problems for families who already made vacation plans for next school year.
Single-track students would have 180 days of classes compared to 177 days at other schools.
“We can’t keep track 4 if we can’t,” Johnson-Hostler said. “Wake County Schools isn’t in control of the calendar.”
This story was originally published April 19, 2021 at 1:21 PM.
