Due to an unusually snowy & icy winter in NC, school calendars across the state are in jeopardy of breaking state law requiring the school year to end by June 10. The current statewide calendar law was written by the hotel & tourism industry six years ago.
Educators, students, and their families across the state are cancelling spring break plans, holiday celebrations, Memorial Day cookouts, and Saturdays in the garden. Instead of celebrating spring, which couldn't come sooner, they will be in school making up for days missed to snow and ice.
"I have members who call me who are heartbroken that they're missing important holidays with their families," said Haywood County NCAE President Jenny Wood, whose January and early February was spent shoveling snow and wishing for warmer temperatures. "Some of our educators have pre-paid flights to see loved ones or have plans to spend time with family."
School systems across the state share Wood's plight as they deal with two converging factors -- mother nature and state law -- which are forcing school systems to cut into family time on weekends and spring holidays.
Buncombe County President Anna Austin said NCAE can't do much about the weather, but she is working with the NCAE Government Relations Department to pass legislation in May that will relieve school systems who are bound by a current one-size-fits-all school calendar that jams a school year into a mandated August 25 to June 10 schedule.
"There is simply no room for the kind of weather we've had in 2010 to absorb these days within that time frame," said Austin. "Our lobbyists in 2009 got two bills passed in the House that could help, but the coastal hotel and tourism industry had both bills bottled up in the state Senate."
Austin said that the newly elected Senate Majority Leader Martin Nesbitt (D-Asheville) indicated that passing the legislation is a top priority for him when the General Assembly reconvenes on May 12. Nesbitt knows firsthand that Buncombe County and surrounding counties are on the verge of breaking the state calendar law because the system is running out of Saturdays to make up school.
NCAE President Sheri Strickland, who visited members in the western part of the state, said NCAE's Government Relations Department is already working with leaders in the legislature and she is optimistic for both a short-term fix for 2010 and a long-term reform that is based on community needs and not the needs of the coastal tourism industry.
