Wake high school students won’t take fall exams until after winter break. Here’s why.
Wake County school board members say depriving teachers of workdays is too high a price to pay to allow high school students to take final exams before winter break.
The Wake County school board reviewed Tuesday two proposed 2022-23 school schedules for traditional-calendar schools. One option continues to have final exams in January, while the other has them in December by making scheduling changes such as eliminating fall semester teacher workdays.
Board members told the district’s calendar committee to nix the option that eliminated the teacher workdays. Teachers use those days to receive training, enter student grades for report cards and to get a break from classes.
“One of the questions I asked was whether you’d be willing to give up the teacher workdays in order to end the semester at winter break, and 75% said they were not willing to give up the teacher workdays,” said Tamani Anderson Powell, the administrator who coordinates the calendar committee.
Anderson Powell said Wake’s hands are tied because of North Carolina’s school calendar law, which sets when most schools can begin and end the school year.
NC school calendar law limits districts
The school calendar law was passed by the General Assembly in 2004 at the request of the tourism industry and some parents. These groups were concerned about how the school year was starting earlier and earlier in August, cutting into summer vacation time.
Under current state law, schools can start no earlier than the Monday closest to Aug. 26 and end no later than the Friday closest to June 11. Some schools, such as charter schools, year-round schools, some modified-calendar schools and some low-performing schools, are exempt from the law.
The state House has passed several school calendar flexibility bills this session, including one for Wake County. But Senate leader Phil Berger has said the Senate won’t act on the bills this session.
“We can always remind people that the modified calendar ends right before winter break,” said school board member Jim Martin. “We’ve got to get the legislature to allow us to do that. That would be a great calendar.”
Working around school calendar law
Since it’s unlikely lawmakers will let Wake start high schools in early-to-mid August, the district’s calendar committee drew up an option for the 2022-23 school year showing how they could end the fall semester in December.
Under that calendar, there would be no teacher workdays until the spring semester. Additionally, the fall semester would have 80 days of classes compared to 97 in the second semester.
The 2022-23 draft calendar that has exams after winter break has five teacher workdays in the fall semester. It would also have 92 days in the fall semester and 85 days in the spring semester.
“Everybody loves the idea of ending prior to winter break,” Anderson-Powell told the board. But when asked to pick between the two choices, Anderson Powell said 70% of the teachers and administrators she talked to preferred the version that had the workdays in the fall semester.
The school board will vote June 15 or in July on draft 2022-23 calendars for traditional-calendar schools, modified-calendar schools and year-round schools.
Anderson Powell got a resounding no when she asked if she should continue working on the calendar that has no fall semester teacher workdays.
“I think we heard pretty loud and clear from the committee folks,” said board vice chairwoman Lindsay Mahaffey. “But I appreciate you looking into that.”
