Beaufort Co. school board decides on weather makeup days from Hurricane Dorian
Beaufort County School District’s Board of Education voted to stick to its published calendar for weather makeup days on Monday, after discussing three alternative schedules and rehashing a heated community discussion about Veterans Day.
The district will make up three of the four days missed from Hurricane Dorian, attending school on Nov. 11, 26, 27, and March 13. Nov. 26 will become a full day instead of a half day, and Nov. 27, the day before Thanksgiving, will become a half day.
The make up days were approved 7-3, with JoAnn Orischak, John Dowling and William Smith voting no.
The board of education voted 8-2 to waive the fourth missed day, with Orischak and chairwoman Christina Gwozdz opposed, at the end of a board meeting that lasted more than four hours.
While several board members expressed discomfort with attending school on Veterans Day, a topic that had been thoroughly discussed at previous board and committee meetings, they were more reluctant to shift from the calendar parents had already seen.
Over four years and through six storm-related school closures, district families and employees have experienced some headaches as the district and the board decided how best to meet the 120 hours of class time in a semester required by state law while not compromising test scores or unnecessarily disrupting already-made vacation plans.
When the board reversed its decision on makeup days from Hurricane Matthew two separate times in 2016, the decisions had been met with widespread criticism and complaints.
Mary Stratos, the district’s new chief instructional services officer, had similar misgivings, endorsing the published calendar after presenting four makeup day options.
“Only because it’s something that’s been consistently communicated to the school district, and it’s not a knee jerk reaction,” she said.
Stratos and superintendent Frank Rodriguez said that the district was working with its five JROTC units and local veterans groups to make sure students still celebrated Veterans Day at school.
Two of the other options the district provided used Nov. 26 and 27, Feb. 17 and March 13 as makeup days; one included Veterans Day as a half day and the other did not.
In addition, the district included an option that harkened back to past years of weather makeup days: the fall semester could be extended to Jan. 10, pushing back the spring semester and possibly changing high school graduation dates.
However, Stratos said the state Department of Education had rejected the new option shortly before Tuesday’s meeting, citing a state law that school districts must use the three make up days built into their calendars before they can waive missed school days.
Before the vote, academic committee chairwoman Tricia Fidrych told fellow board members that she wanted the process approving next year’s calendar to be different. When the 2019-20 calendar was approved in February, six of the board’s 11 members had served for less than two months.
“We had been on the board for six weeks or whatever, and this calendar was recommended to us by a committee of principals, teachers,” Fidrych said. “It sounded like a good idea.”
This year’s calendar approval is already shaping up to be different. The academic committee began reviewing the district’s proposed 2020-21 calendar in July.
“Can I give you a heads up?” Fidrych asked, addressing Stratos. “The academic committee, we’re going to be looking at this.”
“It’s like a Johnny Cash song,” Stratos replied. “I can hear the train coming.”
This story was originally published September 23, 2019 at 11:42 PM.