Next year’s calendar for CMS: Students will have a longer winter break
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools picked a 2023-24 school year calendar that maximizes instruction time and teacher workdays, according to district leaders.
The calendar approved by the CMS Board of Education on Wednesday is a hybrid of two proposed calendars of which the district asked the community for feedback.
School starts Monday, Aug. 28, 2023. The last day is Friday, June 7, 2024.
The calendar includes 177 instructional days and 1,062 instructional hours. A holiday break begins Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023 for students and runs through Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024. Teachers have a workday on both sides of that break — Dec. 20 and Jan. 2, 2024.
Students and teachers return to school Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024.
For spring break, students will have Friday, March 29, 2024 off through the following week. They will return Monday, April 8, 2024. Teachers have a scheduled workday on March 29.
The 2023-24 calendar includes a total of 17 teacher workdays.
District leaders said during this week’s meeting they wanted to plan uninterrupted “chunks” of learning time and ensure a teacher workday was scheduled after the end of each quarter.
Why NC schools start later
Board chair Elyse Dashew and member Margaret Marshall both addressed other feedback they’ve heard about parents wanting the district to start school years earlier. North Carolina requires most districts to wait until the Monday closest to Aug. 26 before they start school. The law was passed in 2004 amid requests from the tourism industry.
But some surrounding counties, such as Gaston, have bucked the law, and opened earlier.
One potential benefit of the earlier date is allowing high school students who take community college classes to finish the first semester before the winter break.
“A lot of our colleagues in surrounding counties have moved to a calendar that starts aligned with their community colleges,” said Dashew.
“It’s something we have been advocating for for years. We need to continue to watch them and see what benefits they gain.”
Marshall said community and district leaders have been working on changing the law for years and haven’t had success, yet.
“I also know that we have to take into account making sure we have enough time in the summer to get all the HVAC work that’s happening, which is so needed and opening three new schools (next summer,)“ Marshall said. “So we really felt like this is the year to not make some big changes. (This) calendar takes all of the right elements into consideration.”
Community provides feedback
More than 8,800 people responded to CMS’ survey on the 2023-24 calendar, with 56% choosing option B — the calendar leaders turned into the hybrid version ultimately approved. Most of the participants were CMS employees and parents.
Of the responses, 1,306 people opted for the calendar with the longer winter break, and 1,207 wanted a calendar with longer uninterrupted instructional time. For example, in the approved calendar, there are no teacher workdays or holidays in October, and from Feb. 1, 2024 through March 28, 2024, there is only one day off for students and teachers: Monday, Feb. 19, 2024, which is President’s Day.
