York County schools consider common schedules

Leaders in York County’s four school districts are considering 2016-17 school calendars that would end first semester exams before winter break and have the same spring break week.

The Rock Hill and Fort Mill school districts wrapped up middle and high school first semester exams before winter break in December 2015 for the first time in years.

Meanwhile, the York and Clover districts continued to wrap up first semester exams in January 2016, as school districts across the county and state have done in the past.

However, all four York County districts are considering instructional calendars for the 2016-17 school year that would end the first semester before the December break.

The Rock Hill, Fort Mill, York and Clover districts are also recommending proposed calendars to school boards that have the same week for spring break in 2017: April 10 to 14.

“We got pretty resounding feedback from our staff, but also from our families, that having a coordinated spring break was something that was pretty important to them,” said Tim Cooper, public information officer for the York school district.

The Clover school board in January took the first vote on a proposed 2016-17 calendar that would have spring break the following week, April 17 to 21.

Bryan Dillon, Clover schools’ public information officer, said the board will consider an altered calendar proposal Monday that changes the recommended 2017 spring break to April 10 to 14.

Dillon said the third week of April was a concern to Clover’s instructional staff because “when we got back from spring break in the fourth week, we’d come right back into the testing window for middle and elementary school.”

The Rock Hill and Fort Mill school boards have not voted on calendar proposals.

Mychal Frost, spokeman Rock Hill schools, said 59 percent of those who responded to a district survey wanted York County school districts to have the same spring break.

Kelly McKinney, communications officer for Fort Mill schools, said the Fort Mill board will discuss a proposed calendar at its Tuesday work session that schedules spring break April 10-14.

McKinney said Fort Mill parents and staff like having spreak break after Good Friday, which in 2017 falls on April 14. She said the board calls for Good Friday to be a school holiday.

However, McKinney said state testing dates for the spring of 2017 are not yet certain, so that makes it difficult to determine when spring break should fall.

Cooper said the York school board, which has had one vote on a proposed calendar, is looking to follow the lead of Rock Hill and other districts across the state that ended high school exams before winter break in 2015.

He said it’s important for about 60 York students who take classes at York Technical College to end the fall semester before winter break. The college begins new classes in January.

“There are a lot of things that go into the development of a calendar, but that is a pretty significant group of students and we are able to help them start college in high school,” Cooper said.

However, ending the fall semester before winter break leaves districts with an unequal number of instructional days in the fall and spring semesters.

One reason is a state law that says public schools can’t start classes earlier than the third Monday in August.

Proposed legislation in the state Senate would change that mandate, bumping up the earliest possible school start day to the second Monday in August.

School leaders say that change would give local districts more flexibility.

Cooper said the proposed York calendar for 2016-17 has 87 fall semester instructional days and 93 in the spring.

The proposed Rock Hill calendar has an 85- and 95-day semester split between fall and spring.

Clover is proposing 86- and 94-day split.

McKinney said the Fort Mill school district administration said last year that it didn’t want fewer than 88 days in the first semester, so Fort Mill was considering an 88- and 92-day split.

However, McKinney said one of the first semester days was a half-day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which she said had an absence rate of nearly 20 percent.

She said the school board suggested making the Wednesday before Thanksgiving an all-day holiday because of the high student absence rate.

She also said the board suggested changing the calendar to an 87- and 93-day split between fall and spring.

McKinney said at the request of the board, school leaders also plan to show board members what the calendar would look like if school could begin a week earlier in the fall of 2016.

This story was originally published February 15, 2016 at 4:20 PM with the headline "York County schools consider common schedules."