Calendar flexibility is an issue that received much more attention last school year and for good reason: hurricanes.

It should get a lot more attention this year. A pandemic can do that.

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 was 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 over the last few years, and none have made it past committee in a legislature that had a super-majority in six of the last seven years because of opposition from another industry.

As the North Carolina Genera Assembly has reconvened for their “short” session, instead of introducing bills giving LEA’s more school calendar flexibility and letting them all stall in committee, they should put it to a vote that truly represents what the people want.

In fact, there are 17 bills that have been introduced alone this session for calendar flexibility.

It should never take some natural disasters and a pandemic to make our legislators act on this.

But there is this guy:

Once again, Berger conveniently forgets that there is a pandemic.