Northern Virginia parents should wait to book their summer vacations as school officials in Fairfax County, Arlington and Alexandria consider bumping up students’ start dates to before Labor Day. State law forbids local school systems from opening before the federal holiday, but both Fairfax and Alexandria officials are polling their communities to decide whether to pursue a waiver from the state.
In a survey sent out to Fairfax parents, Superintendent Jack Dale said moving the school calendar up a week would create scheduling flexibility against snow days and allow more instructional time before state exams. The schedule, which would let students out earlier in June, also would align more closely with local universities, creating better access for students who take college courses in high school.
“Tradition at this point is the biggest ‘con,'” School board member Dan Storck said. “[The shift] would allow us to get in more school before winter break, which obviously involves some diminishment of learning when kids are off, and then we end the semester two weeks after that.”
The online survey will close Jan. 24, but even if parents support the calendar conversion and the board receives the waiver, Storck says more discussions would be held and that any changes would hold until fall 2012.
Alexandria school officials want to shake things up this fall, and add two school days to the current 183. T.C. Williams High Schools has never reached its federal performance goals, and last year was designated a “persistently lowest achieving” school by Virginia based on state exam scores.
“We can’t believe we can continue doing things as we have done,” said school board President Yvonne Folkerts, who led a community forum on the proposal last week.
Arlington County Public Schools have applied for a waiver every year, but it’s never come through, spokesman FrankBellavia said.
The state allows waivers for school districts that lost several days to inclement weather in the past year, or that share resources or are neighbors with districts that have already obtained a waiver. Of 132 school districts, 74 have waivers.
Del. Tag Gleason, R-Loudoun, said the exception becoming the rule is one reason he’s pushing to repeal the law for the second year in a row.
