Former board candidate Mike Stone weighs in on calendar controversy

More on the calendar controversy...former GCS Board candidate Mike Stone, unsuccessful in his bid to unseat Dist. 3 Board member Darlene Garrett this past fall, tells Guilford School Watch today:

Bad call last night. It's not so much about an arbitrary start and end
date for the school year enacted by Raleigh, but it's about the education
process. Amos hit the nail on the head... adding days to the end of a
school year (after EOG testing and exams are over) is simply putting in the
time. There's no instructional value to adding 3 days to the end of the
year. It would be more educationally advantageous to have made up the days
by giving up part of the spring break.

If I recall correctly, the school board agreed to use spring break as make
up days when they were developing this year's calendar. So the school
board makes a decision - hoping they won't have to enforce it - and when it
becomes necessary, they cave in and penalize the students' academic
opportunities. The school board simply decided to take the easy way out by
meeting the letter of the law in the number of instructional days rather
than show leadership and do what the board agreed to do earlier in the
year.

Now that said, I don't think there's any teeth in the law that says you
can't teach past June 10th. I can't imagine there will be any ramifications for going past the cut off date.

At least there's nothing written that says, "if you teach past 6/10 then we'll do... fill in the blank." There are enough loopholes in the law to allow school districts to make local decisions, and weather related incidents are one of them. I
don't expect anything to come of this situation.
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Good points, Mike.

E.C. :)