Johnston County school board does 180, drops plan to start classes in early August
Just one week after deciding to start classes in early August, Johnston County school leaders have reversed their decision after finding out they would be in violation of North Carolina’s school-calendar law.
Last week, the school board adopted a “modified calendar” for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years that ran classes from early August to late May. But in a specially called meeting Monday morning the board unanimously rescinded the vote after getting legal advice that it couldn’t use the modified calendar.
“The vote was made with no awareness that it was against state law,” Chair Lyn Andrews said Monday. “I wanted to make certain that people understood that we did not willfully break the state law in that vote.”
The board will vote on a replacement calendar at a later meeting. Both options under consideration would comply with the calendar law.
Johnston County is North Carolina’s seventh-largest district. It has 36,000 students.
The officially nonpartisan school board has a Republican majority. Andrews said she has let the county’s state legislative delegation know they’re not among the 25% of school districts defying the calendar law.
Legality of calendar vote questioned
The state’s traditional public schools can’t open sooner than the Monday closest to Aug. 26 or close later than the Friday closest to June 11. The school-calendar law doesn’t apply to private schools, charter schools, year-round schools, early-college high schools and some low-performing schools.
When the calendar law was adopted in 2004, an exemption was carved out for the handful of schools in Wake County that were the only ones in the state using the modified calendar..
Johnston County had cited the exemption for the modified calendar in adopting that schedule in a 4-3 board vote. But after the Nov. 12 vote, The News & Observer asked the district how it qualified for the exemption.
School board attorney Katie Cornetto said Monday “a question from the press” caused her to do additional research to now say that the modified calendar could not be used.
“After that approval, it became aware to us that we possibly could be out of compliance with state law because of the beginning date and the ending date of that modified calendar,” Andrews said. “As soon as I realized that, I reached out to several people to try get clarification.”
Board members argued Monday over how they could have gotten into a position to approve an illegal calendar.
“How did it ever get to the point that we were presenting to the public that we were going to offer a modified calendar when we couldn’t?” asked board member Michelle Antoine, who had voted against the modified calendar.
But Andrews, who had voted for the modified calendar, said, “We could go around and around about this.”
Traditional or condensed calendar?
The board will now pick between a traditional calendar and a “condensed calendar.” A condensed calendar would shorten the fall semester to let high school students take final exams before the winter break.
The district has already adopted a “condensed calendar” for this school year to try to stay in compliance with the calendar law while still allowing high school students to get their finals in before Christmas.
The traditional calendar would run from Aug. 25 to June 4 next school year. The condensed calendar would run from Aug. 25 to May 21. In contrast, the now-rescinded modified calendar would have run from Aug. 4 to May 22 with a two-week break in October.
Andrews said the public at least knows now that classes won’t start next year until late August.
Board members want to get more public and school feedback on the two choices before a vote in December or January. Vice chair Terry Tippett, who had opposed the modified calendar, told his colleagues they don’t want to “shoot yourself in the foot more than we already have.”
“We want to make sure that we get it right,” said board member Kay Carroll, who had voted for the modified calendar.
