Schools shuffle calendars for new school year

The new school year is in full swing and while most of the changes made in the Russellville City or Franklin County school systems for the start of this school year probably went unnoticed, one major change was apparent: the school calendar.
This year, the starting date for classes in both school systems was pushed back two weeks following school calendar legislation that was passed by the state legislature in May.
The Flexible School Calendar Act, which became law May 10, states that schools can start no sooner than two weeks prior to Aug. 17 and end no later than the Friday before Memorial Day, with students attending class for 180 days or for 1,080 hours total each year.
The original purpose of the bill was to move back the start of public schools in Alabama in order extend the summer tourist and vacationing season.
Rep. Randy Davis (R-Daphne), who sponsored the bill, said he thought the move could generate as much as $22 million in tax revenue for the state since tourists would have more time to go to the beach or to other state attractions during the summer months.
Gov. Bentley vetoed the bill, stating local school systems should be given the authority to decide the start and end dates that worked best for their systems and their students.
However, state lawmakers chose to override the veto on May 10, which automatically made the bill a law.
“This is the first time in my career that we had a whole week of teacher in-service and it’s because of the way the calendar is laid out this year,” Russellville City Schools Superintendent Rex Mayfield said.
“Most of the teachers I spoke with really enjoyed having that extra time, though. They all work so hard getting their rooms and materials ready, so the extra week helped them to not be so stressed out about getting everything done in time.”
Mayfield said even though the couple of extra weeks teachers had to prepare for classes and the students had to enjoy their summertime freedom were nice, he said there would be some setbacks to the calendar changes later on.
Mayfield said in their school system, they had to take away a few days that students and teachers would have normally gotten off or they had to change some of the days to half days off instead of full days off.
“One problem that we’ve noticed right away is that with our original calendar for the 2012-2013 year, we had planned to let school out for the entire week of Thanksgiving instead of just Wednesday through Friday,” Mayfield said.
“One reason we did that is because the band will be taking a trip to perform in a parade in New York and will be gone that week, so that’s 200 students who would be missing school anyway.
“When the calendar was set up that way with students being out that whole week, we had parents of younger students who decided to take vacations that week and many of them put down non-refundable deposits.
“When we had to change the calendar to reflect the legislation and we’ll now be going to school Monday and Tuesday of that week, we’ve got 200 band students and several others who will have to be out and it will adversely affect the attendance.”
Franklin County School Superintendent Gary Williams agreed that he felt there would be problems associated with the calendar changes throughout the year.
The Franklin County School board also had to amend their calendar to reflect the new legislation, which meant county teachers and students will get fewer days off during Christmas break, off days were cut out during the fall and the spring, and the system scheduled a couple of half-days that were built into the spring schedule.
“I know it was nice to get a later start back to school, but when the students and teachers aren’t getting that normal fall break and their normal spring breaks that they’re used to, it’s going to make the school year seem more monotonous than usual,” Williams said.
“It will be hard to keep students motivated and focused for testing in the spring when they don’t have those breaks to get refreshed.”