No changes to school calendar

Alicia Petska
Culpeper Star Exponent
January 7, 2005

The proposal to bring a longer school year to Culpeper County, an idea that has stirred up strong sentiments among local parents and teachers, came to a somewhat humdrum end Thursday.

After reviewing the results of a December survey that demonstrated a strong opposition to the controversial measure, the school Calendar Committee quickly decided to end the months-long debate over the matter.

Larry Carter, the school division’s executive director of administrative services and head of the committee, proposed that the group abandon the idea of moving up the school start date, a motion that met with no resistance. After a moment of silence, the group moved on to the next matter at hand with no further discussion.

This staid reaction was somewhat anticlimactic after the strong opinions that had been voiced over the past three months. The original proposal made at the October School Board meeting to change the first day of school from Aug. 26 to Aug. 1 had turned out to be a can of worms for school officials, drawing out a vocal contingent of opposing parents and teachers.

The survey, which received 1,192 responses from parents and school employees, confirmed the trickle of feedback school administrators had already been receiving.

The majority of respondents said an early August start date was unmanageable, ending the first semester before winter vacation was not worth starting school earlier and the challenges to an earlier start date outweighed the possible benefits.

Faced with that data, officials decided to close the discussion.

“Clearly, there’s not a will in our community to consider a year-round calendar or a significantly earlier start date,” Superintendent David Cox said after the meeting.

This was the second time the idea of an extended school year was quashed by lack of public support.

Elizabeth Hutchins, chair of the School Board and Calendar Committee member, said she doesn’t expect there will come a day when the local climate will allow the entire school system to switch to a year-round calendar, but perhaps one day it could be an optional program at a single school.

Either way, the school division has to continue to think of new ways to help the lower-performing students, she said.

“I don’t know what the answer is,” Hutchins said, “but we’ve got to do something for these kids, to keep them up to snuff so they can graduate and be successful.”

Assistant Superintendent Eric Conti, who made the original October presentation to the School Board and, as a result, had initially been the public face of the extended calendar proposal, expressed a similar sentiment, saying he was relieved by Thursday’s decision.

“I think it became a distraction,” he said, adding that the discussion was veering more toward vacation issues and away from educational issues.

“What I’m most excited about,” Conti said, “is expanding the number of teacher work days. I think that’s a much better vehicle for solving some of our problems.”

Over the course of the school year, work days and professional development days had been another issue frequently before the committee, which discussed increasing the number of such days, as well as rearranging their structure to make them more productive.

Fifty-five percent of Culpeper parents and school employees believe work days are beneficial for the faculty, according to the December survey.

After terminating the discussion of an extended school year, the committee went on to devise a two-year calendar that follows the traditional 183 school days per year format, which will be offered for the School Board’s consideration at its January meeting on Monday.

Monday will be only the first reading of the calendar proposal and the Board will not vote on it at that time.

Alicia Petska can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 125 or apetska@starexponent.com.