And my school system did not lose a day because of weather or any unforeseen event.

The fall semester ended on the day it was supposed to according to the school system’s calendar, but it’s this calendar that needs to end.

Calendar flexibility is an issue that received much more attention in this last couple of school years – and for good reasons.

By 2017, North Carolina was one of only one of 14 states that had state laws that governed school calendars. The graphic below is from the Feb. 2017 Final Report to the Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight Committee on school calendars.

What is also shows is that North Carolina was at the time one of the TWO states in the entire country whose laws dictated when a school could start and when it had to end.

200 bills have been introduced in the NCGA in the last few years and none have made it past committee in a legislature that had a super-majority  in six years of the last seven years because of opposition from another industry.

This teacher has no problem in going with the family to the beach in May instead of August, but he does have a problem with starting school after two football games have been played and fall sport athletes have already been in season for almost a month.

This state should get rid of its school calendar laws and allow each system to set up it’s own schedule rather than having systems use various loopholes as a premise to do what it feels is best for its students.

Something tells me that LEAs could come up with a viable yet flexible school calendar that serves students rather than a lawmaking body that can’t even come up with a budget even when it spends an extra 100+ days in “session.”