By Connie Leinbach
Updated July 16, 2024
Hyde County Schools has abandoned an earlier start for Ocracoke school students and has gone back to its regular start and end dates, which will be Aug. 26 with school ending June 11.
“The Board of Education voted on July 9 to comply with the legal demand to change the Ocracoke calendar to comply with the start date to avoid potential legal and financial repercussions that could detract from our strategic plan to ensure student success,” said Dr. Melanie Shaver, superintendent of schools, in a July 10 press release and letter to parents.
The calendar is updated on the Hyde County Schools website. While the first day back to school for Ocracoke will be later, the first day of school for Mattamuskeet will be Aug. 12 with the last day May 30.
“We will move forward with the calendar as it is,” Julio Morales, administrative assistant to Shaver, said in an email. “More than 20 school systems in the state have adopted calendars that may not follow the entire set of expectations from the archaic calendar law.” Only one parent complained, he said.
Earlier this year, the district held meetings on Ocracoke about changing the school calendar and emailed students, teachers and parents three choices.
The overwhelming vote was for the earlier start date of Aug. 15, Rachael Chestnut, Ocracoke’s school board representative, said in an interview.
But when the district announced that school would begin on Aug. 15 it caught some Ocracoke parents by surprise. One business owner told the Observer that student employees were upset that they would lose more than a week of needed wages.
Under North Carolina law, traditional public schools are prohibited from starting the school year sooner than the Monday closest to Aug. 26 and from ending the year later than the Friday closest to June 11.
J. Mitchell Armbruster, a lawyer for three Carteret County businesses who sued their school system over its early start date, on behalf of several Ocracoke parents, sent Hyde County Schools a letter demanding return to the Aug. 26 start date for Ocracoke.
“I do know from talking to my clients that it is a concern in Ocracoke, where a lot of the kids do have summer jobs and other things, and it just wasn’t something that they realized was happening,” Armbruster said when contacted. “I know they could say everyone should have known, or whatever, but (parents) really were taken by surprise that this had happened.”
After discussing it, Chestnut said the board decided to revert Ocracoke School’s start date. Along with acceding to what the community wanted, “We wanted to be compliant with the law,” Chestnut said.
In North Carolina, the General Assembly has regulated school calendars for 20 years, largely due to the tourism industry’s concerns that starting earlier would hurt businesses, according to a report on www.ednc.org. The report also says that of the 115 school districts in the state, 29 are in defiance of the calendar law, which only applies to traditional public schools and exempts charter schools, year-round schools, and early colleges.
Shaver said in a clarification that Hyde Academy, which operates on both Mattamuskeet and Ocracoke campuses, allows students to enroll in college classes in ninth grade and begin working on an associate’s degree, a college transfer degree, or another workplace certification by the time they graduate. Mattamuskeet is a stand-alone school classified as a Cooperative Innovative High Schools and because of that it is exempt and has calendar flexibility.
Shaver made the following presentation to the school board. A report released in 2023, found here, shows the only school listed for Hyde County that was not exempt was Ocracoke School.
“This (school calendar) legislation does not allow local communities the flexibility or right to choose their calendar and has long been challenged with bills being filed in the House and Senate,” Shaver said in her press release. “Hyde County Schools has been committed to finding solutions within the legislation but does not qualify for the exemptions due to our small size. This situation has prompted legal threats that we must address to preserve our limited state and county budgets.”
The legal school calendar makes it difficult for schools to end the semester in December, according to the ednc.org report.
Hyde’s proposed Aug. 15 start would have allowed for Friday afternoons off to allow for remedial work and testing, Chestnut said, rather than taking students out of regular classes during the week.
And that still will be the case because the board added 20 minutes to the Ocracoke school day.
Shaver said the student’s daily start time will be at 7:55 a.m. and the end time will be at 3:15 p.m. Monday to Thursday, but with an end time of 11:30 a.m. Fridays.
Hyde will do what it can to end the first semester in December, though it will consist only of 70 days, including testing, Shaver said.
Shaver said the presentations to the board reviewing the process, the polling results, and additional information were live streamed on March 5 on Facebook. View the presentation with the data breakdown here.
Shaver made the following other points in her response to the Observer:
The calendar law in North Carolina, which mandates specific start and end dates for the school year, has been argued to be detrimental to student achievement for several reasons:
- Misalignment with college schedules: The mandated school calendar does not align with the Beaufort County Community College schedule. This affects students taking dual enrollment courses or advanced classes that follow the college calendar, creating scheduling conflicts and disrupting learning. (We have 79 students in the district who are a part of Hyde Academy, which allows students to begin in ninth grade by taking dual enrollment courses). 53% of our Hyde County population have a high school diploma or less, according to the myFutureNC dashboard. By providing the opportunity and support for students to gain college credit in high school, we set a record of success and ensure that students who may not have the financial means to go to college receive the training and education that they need to be successful in the future to obtain a two-year transfer degree, decreasing the cost of their college experience (cost savings of approximately $30,000). Hyde Academy operates with a waiver because it is a Cooperative Innovative High School with calendar flexibility. Both Ocracoke and Mattamuskeet campuses have Hyde Academy.
- Impact on Advanced Placement (AP) courses: AP exams are held nationwide on set May dates. A later school start date gives students less time to prepare for these exams than peers in other states, potentially impacting their performance and scores. This decreases the academic rigor rating that a school may receive if it does not offer or succeeds in the AP program.
- Summer Learning Loss and Interruption of Learning Continuity: A more extended summer break can lead to more significant learning loss, particularly among younger and disadvantaged students. Shorter breaks spread throughout the year can mitigate this loss and help maintain academic progress. According to myFutureNC, 62% of Hyde County students live in poverty, versus the state average of 17%. Our students need support to mitigate learning loss. Ocracoke became a Title I school in 2018, demonstrating a shift in the socio-economics and needs of our island students.
All of these items are well-researched and documented. The Leandro case has been back and forth in the courts since 1994. In this case, which was ruled upon and overturned in 2021 and reinstated in 2022, the N.C. Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding our state constitution and the rights of our children, families and communities, stating that “any and all other state actors and their officers, agents, servants, and employees are authorized to do what is necessary to fully effectuate years 2 and 3 of the comprehensive remedial plan.”
If you view the Leandro remedial plan found here, page 54 under iii. Action Steps to be Initiated in Fiscal Year 2022: item 3 states that the necessary policies to allow school calendar flexibility to ensure local schools align with community college and university schedules will be adopted.
The responsible parties will be the North Carolina General Assembly, North Carolina Office of the Governor, North Carolina State Board of Education, and North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (DPI). Since these responsible parties have not followed the court orders from 2022, Hyde County Schools has been part of proposed legislation changes and has explored other options, such as Restart designation to allow for calendar flexibility.
The DPI website describes a Restart model “in which the State Board of Education would authorize the local board of education to operate the school with the same exemptions from statutes and rules as a charter school authorized under Article 14A of this Chapter, or under the management of an educational management organization that has been selected through a rigorous review process.
The validity of the GS 115C-84.2 legislation (school calendar legislation) is an issue since the General Assembly is ignoring the Supreme Court rulings to enact the Leandro remedial plan. This is a complex issue that is far more nuanced than the clear-cut issue that people assume it to be.
However, for Hyde County Schools, the fiscal demands and drawn-out litigation period while our families need answers to know when to send their students to school far exceed our desire to be right in a court of law at this time, and we do not want to detract from our strategic plan goals to ensure student success.
Correction: Dr. Melanie Shaver clarified Mattamuskeet School’s school calendar flexibility.
