School board huddles with its lawyer for hour after getting letter threatening lawsuit and before vote
Alamance-Bur-lington school board members have received two demand letters – including a threat of legal action – that apparently prompted them to vote, begrudgingly, 4-3 Monday night to adopt a school calendar that complies, only for the 2025-26 school year, with North Carolina’s long-standing, tourism industry-backed school calendar law that specifies when the state’s 115 public school systems can start and end each school year.
Voting to adopt a school calendar for 2025-26 that follows the statutory requirement to begin the upcoming school year on Monday, August 25 and end on Friday, June 5, 2026 were: vice chairman Dan Ingle, and school board members Chuck Marsh, Dr. Charles Parker, and Avery Wagoner.
School board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves and board members Tameka Harvey and Seneca Rogers voted against, indicating Monday night that they were ready to adopt a calendar with earlier start and end dates for the upcoming school year.
However, all seven school board members were unified in signaling their intention to adopt a calendar for 2026-27 – but would likely apply to future school years unless rescinded – with earlier start and end dates than state law allows. The change would also enable students to complete fall semester exams prior to their Christmas break and take effect beginning with the 2026-27 school year.
ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming forecast Monday night that a calendar with earlier start and end dates for 2026-27 would be presented to the board for a discussion and potential vote on February 24.
The 4-3 vote to adopt a statutorily-compliant school calendar for 2025-26 followed an hourlong closed session that school board members entered into near the beginning of their meeting Monday night – to preserve attorney-client privilege – but prior to the closed session that the school board customarily enters near the end of each semi-monthly meeting to discuss confidential personnel matters.
During a subsequent discussion about the school calendar, Parker revealed Monday night that he and his fellow board members had received a demand letter from a lawyer in Raleigh, J. Mitchell Armbruster, who had successfully sued the school boards in Union and Carteret counties in 2023 and 2024, respectively, for adopting school calendars that defied the state school calendar law.
Though Parker didn’t mention it during his otherwise pointed criticism of the attorney’s letter Monday night, the school board received a similar letter last week from three groups associated with the state tourism industry, the N.C. Restaurant & Lodging Association in Raleigh; the N.C. Association of Realtors in Greensboro; and the N.C. Travel & Tourism Coalition in Raleigh. Representatives (termed “principals”) for all three groups are registered as lobbyists with the Secretary of State’s office.
ABSS officials furnished copies of the two letters that school board members received from Armbruster and the three groups Tuesday morning in response to a public records request by The Alamance News.
Both the attorney and the three groups (in a joint letter) strongly advised the school board to adopt a calendar that adheres to the state’s school calendar law – and expressed concerns that the board would consider adopting a school calendar that deviates from the parameters within the school calendar law.
“I have been contacted by parents and business owners in Alamance County who have become aware that your board is considering adopting a calendar for the upcoming 2025-26 school year which violates state law. You also currently have a poll on your district website asking for input on calendar options for the 2025-26 school year, one option of which would violate state law (proposing to start school for students on August 13, 2025).
“We should not be teaching our children that it is appropriate to violate the law. Otherwise, my clients’ intention is to file suit against the district, obtain an order invalidating any illegal calendar, and seek an award of attorneys’ fees.” – Attorney J. Mitchell (“Mitch”) Armbruster
“I have been contacted by parents and business owners in Alamance County who have become aware that your board is considering adopting a calendar for the upcoming 2025-26 school year which violates state law,” Armbruster wrote in his January 21 letter to school board members. “You also currently have a poll on your district website asking for input on calendar options for the 2025-26 school year, one option of which would violate state law (proposing to start school for students on August 13, 2025).
The board had previously distributed two surveys, the latter of which included specific starting and ending dates for the 2025-26 school year, to gauge whether ABSS students, their families, and the community support starting school up to two weeks earlier than what state law allows, but which would enable students to complete their exams and other tests before their Christmas break.
Both surveys showed that a majority of ABSS respondents preferred an earlier start date, although participation in both surveys was low among the 22,412 students enrolled in ABSS at the end of the first month of the current school year, their families, and more than 2,000 school employees.
Data from the first survey conducted late last year, which was presented to school board members two weeks ago ,showed that 1,144 respondents (or 68.7 percent) of a total of 1,665 people who completed the survey favored an earlier start to the school year than state law currently allows.
Results from the second survey – which included specific dates for the 2025-26 school year and was conducted over the last two weeks – was presented to the school board Monday night. The second survey revealed that 3,905 (58.6 percent) out of a total of 6,663 respondents preferred an earlier start date. Under that option, ABSS students would start the 2025-26 school year on August 13 and end it on May 29, 2026. Fall semester exams would be given before Christmas break, from December 15 through December 19.
The second survey revealed that 2,758 (41.4) percent of respondents preferred to continue to follow the state calendar law. Under that option, ABSS students would begin the school year on August 25 and end it on June 5, 2026. Fall semester exams would be given the week after students return from Christmas break, from January 12 through January 16, 2026.
Both calendar options for 2025-26 conform to other statutory requirements, such as the minimum number of: hours/days of instruction for students; mandatory teacher workdays; annual vacation leave days; and legal holidays.
“We should not be teaching our children that it is appropriate to violate the law,” Armbruster wrote in his letter warning the board not to adopt a calendar with an earlier start date. “Otherwise, my clients’ intention is to file suit against the district, obtain an order invalidating any illegal calendar, and seek an award of attorneys’ fees.”
Armbruster recently represented plaintiffs in challenging “illegal calendars” in Union and Carteret counties, the latter of which was nullified by a superior court judge in June 2024.
Contrary to Armbruster’s description, the judge who nullified Carteret County’s 2024-25 school calendar, William “Bill” Wolfe (whose judicial district includes Edgecombe and Wilson counties), denied the plaintiffs’ request for an award for attorneys’ fees. Wolfe instead ordered each party to pay its own attorneys’ fees, based on a copy of the June 5, 2024 order that Armbruster included with his letter to ABSS.
Threat of legal action prompts two boards to voluntarily rescind calendars with earlier start date
The school boards in Union County and Hyde County (which includes several beach towns) voluntarily rescinded their “illegal” calendars, the attorney wrote in his letter to ABSS board members.
More than two dozen of the state’s 115 school boards voted to adopt school calendars for the 2024-25 school year that defy the school calendar law, based on an annual report that the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI) submitted to the General Assembly in June 2024.
The three tourism-linked groups sent a joint letter to ABSS last Friday, warning that the school board’s “potential disregard for complying with state law would not only be bad public policy, but also undermines the rule of law.”
[Story continues below photos and quotes of school board members.]
School board member Seneca Rogers:
“To me, what you’re talking about is listening to the people you’re put up here to represent and not looking at an outside entity trying to influence what goes on – [and saying] it stops with us.”
School board member Tameka Harvey:
“It’s not about us. It’s not about our state legislators. The [learning] retention matters, and I can just see those test scores soaring, knowing they are going to be taking exams before Christmas.”
School board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves:
“It’s increasingly hard to manage and meet the expectations of everybody.” [She said she’d recently spoken to a group of young people in the community, and several ABSS moms who were in the audience later asked her about the calendar for the upcoming school year.]
“They were overwhelmingly in favor of [an earlier start]. I reminded them of the current state law; and one of them said, ‘I thought you were elected to do what’s best for our children.’ At what point do we say – enough politics?”
SCHOOL BOARD MEMBER CHUCK mARSH:
“I would like to have our intentions [known], if we are all going with [the preferred option] and having the tourism lobbyists trying to slap our hands. I wonder if we’ll ever have the state, the lobbyists, and everybody on the same page to put the children first. I wonder if we’ll ever get to that point.
“We knew before we got that letter that they were going to come after us. Alamance County is going to be held as an example, and if you kind of follow all the politics, you’ll figure out we will be used as an example as we have been in the past.”
school board member avery wagoner:
“We didn’t make these choices without doing our homework, without listening to our constituents. I’ll tell you: change develops leadership. This is an opportunity for Alamance County, for ABSS, to lead our community – to lead our surrounding counties going forward.”
School board member Dr. Charles Parker:
“There are many reasons to do this [to adopt a calendar with an earlier start date] and only one to not. I want to congratulate the North Carolina tourism industry for keeping it bottled up and not letting it come to a vote.
“We got an email letter from a J. Mitchell Armbruster [saying] ‘I have been contacted by parents and business owners in Alamance County who’ve become aware that your board is considering adopting a calendar for the upcoming school year which violates state law.’ He doesn’t name them, so I guess it’s possible, but all the way at the very end he says, ‘We’ve never seen any studies showing that an early start date actually leads to better student outcomes,’ which I think is arguable – and then he says, ‘but that is irrelevant.’
“That is not at all irrelevant. For me, [the decision] should be based on whether we get better student outcomes, and the fact that that we’re not given the flexibility is really shameful. I think that the law has marginal constitutionality; there is not a rational reason that they picked a specific date.”
School board member Dan Ingle:
“Oh by the way, 29 to 30 school districts have already voted to defy what state law says. The last time [a bill to give school systems calendar flexibility] went through the General Assembly that I could find where it made it through the state house, the vote was 102 to two, and that was in 2023 with 45 Democrats and 68 Republicans voting for it. Well, they sent it to the senate, and it goes into the rules committee and dies. Folks, we’ve got to do better than that in the General Assembly. . . If they haven’t decided this, the General Assembly, in 2026-27, let them sue us.”
“When you look at serving the public and being a good steward, then it would make more sense to wait to 2026-27 to do that – folks that have [made] and have already paid for [vacation plans], we’re not disrupting their lives.”
“We’re going to get sued if we do this [adopt a school calendar with an earlier start date than state law provides].”
In their letter, the three groups claimed that, prior to final passage of the law on August 9, 2004, some N.C. school boards “were moving the start of the school year to early August and even July,” which they said not only meant students were starting school during the hottest part of summer, but also jeopardized family vacations, summer camps, and summer jobs for older students.
Ellington-Graves, the school board’s chairman, said, “It’s increasingly hard to manage and meet the expectations of everybody.” She said she’d recently spoken to a group of young people in the community, and several ABSS moms who were in the audience later asked her about the calendar for the upcoming school year.
“They were overwhelmingly in favor of [an earlier start],” Ellington-Graves recalled. “I reminded them of the current state law; and one of them said, ‘I thought you were elected to do what’s best for our children.’ At what point do we say – enough politics?”
School board members Tameka Harvey and Seneca Rogers also said it’s imperative for the board to keep ABSS students, staff, and families their top priorities.
“To me, what you’re talking about is listening to the people you’re put up here to represent and not looking at an outside entity trying to influence what goes on – [and saying] it stops with us,” Rogers responded.
“It’s not about us,” Harvey said. “It’s not about our state legislators. The [learning] retention matters, and I can just see those test scores soaring, knowing they are going to be taking exams before Christmas.”
Harvey and other school board members expressed concerns this week about the potential for learning loss over the weeks between when students leave for Christmas break and begin fall semester exams in mid-January, under current calendar law requirements. Data cited Monday night indicated that, prior to passage of the school calendar law, Rockingham County students had 39 percent higher scores on chemistry and math exams in 2001.
Ingle: Leandro decision directed public schools to have calendar flexibility
Meanwhile, school board vice chairman Dan Ingle said Monday night that a recent decision by the N.C. Supreme Court in the Leandro lawsuit, filed in 1994 and predicated on the state constitutional mandate that public school students receive a “sound basic education,” directed the General Assembly to give public schools calendar flexibility by 2022.
As part of the Leandro decision, a California-based educational nonprofit, WestEd, was hired in 2018 to study N.C.’s public education needs and develop an “action plan” to ensure the state meets its constitutional mandate. In January 2020, WestEd released a report on its findings and recommendations (Sound Basic Education for All: An Action Plan for North Carolina), and the judge who oversaw the case, David W. Lee (now deceased), entered a consent order codifying the “Leandro Comprehensive Remedial Plan.”
One aspect of Lee’s order – directing the General Assembly to allocate an additional $1.75 billion (later reduced to $677 million) in state funding for public education – remains pending a ruling by the state Supreme Court, which heard arguments in that matter in February 2024.
Ingle said Monday night that one nonmonetary provision within the Leandro remedial plan still stands: the adoption of “necessary policies to allow school calendar flexibility to ensure that local schools can align with community college and university schedules,” according to a summary published in June 2021 by the Governor’s Commission on Access to Sound Basic Education.
Earlier this month, the Surry County school board relied on that interpretation of Lee’s order in voting to adopt a school calendar for 2025-26 with earlier start date (August 13) and end date (May 22, 2026) that state law allows, according to The Mount Airy News.
“Oh by the way, 29 to 30 school districts have already voted to defy what state law says,” Ingle pointed out Monday night. “The last time [a bill to give school systems calendar flexibility] went through the General Assembly that I could find where it made it through the state house, the vote was 102 to two, and that was in 2023 with 45 Democrats and 68 Republicans voting for it. Well, they sent it to the senate, and it goes into the rules committee and dies. Folks, we’ve got to do better than that in the General Assembly…If they haven’t decided this, the General Assembly, in 2026-27, let them sue us.”
‘You’re okay with getting sued next year?’
“Question,” Ellington-Graves countered, “and this is no disrespect, Mr. Ingle. What I’m hearing you say is you’re okay getting sued next year, but you’re not okay getting sued this year?”
Ingle and other school board members acknowledged Monday night that ABSS is financially unable to defend itself against potential litigation over the school calendar, given the $1.6 million deficit in fund balance (“rainy-day savings”) that it ended the 2023-24 fiscal year with last June.
“I didn’t say that,” Ingle explained. “What I said was, when you look at serving the public and being a good steward, then it would make more sense to wait to 2026-27 to do that – folks that have [made] and have already paid for [vacation plans], we’re not disrupting their lives.”
“We’re going to get sued if we do this,” Ingle warned.
Marsh agreed with Ingle’s prediction but insisted that the board should move forward with adopting a calendar that meets the needs of ABSS students and staff.
“I would like to have our intentions [known], if we are all going with [the preferred option] and having the tourism lobbyists trying to slap our hands,” Marsh said Monday night. “I wonder if we’ll ever have the state, the lobbyists, and everybody on the same page to put the children first. I wonder if we’ll ever get to that point.
“We knew before we got that letter that they were going to come after us,” Marsh added. “Alamance County is going to be held as an example, and if you kind of follow all the politics, you’ll figure out we will be used as an example as we have been in the past.”
School board member Avery Wagoner responded, “We didn’t make these choices without doing our homework, without listening to our constituents. I’ll tell you: change develops leadership. This is an opportunity for Alamance County, for ABSS, to lead our community – to lead our surrounding counties going forward.”
The usually-reserved Parker, however, was unsparing in his criticism of the legal threat from Armbruster and what he described as the pressure by outside interests to influence the vote.
“There are many reasons to do this [to adopt a calendar with an earlier start date] and only one to not,” Parker said Monday night. I want to congratulate the North Carolina tourism industry for keeping it bottled up and not letting it come to a vote.
“We got an email letter from a J. Mitchell Armbruster [saying] ‘I have been contacted by parents and business owners in Alamance County who’ve become aware that your board is considering adopting a calendar for the upcoming school year which violates state law,’” Parker said Monday night. “He doesn’t name them, so I guess it’s possible, but all the way at the very end he says, ‘We’ve never seen any studies showing that an early start date actually leads to better student outcomes,’ which I think is arguable – and then he says, ‘but that is irrelevant.’
“That is not at all irrelevant,” said Parker, an engineering professor at Duke University who is also the director of one of the university’s engineering labs. “For me, [the decision] should be based on whether we get better student outcomes, and the fact that that we’re not given the flexibility is really shameful. I think that the law has marginal constitutionality; there is not a rational reason that they picked a specific date.”
School board members voted 4-3 to adopt the school calendar only for the 2025-26 school year which complies with the school calendar law. They agreed by consensus to resume consideration of a school calendar with earlier start and ends for the 2026-27 school year and future school years at their meeting on February 24.
FOR 2025-26 CALENDAR THAT COMPLIES WITH SCHOOL CALENDAR LAW:
Dan Ingle
Chuck Marsh
Dr. Charles Parker
Avery Wagoner
Against:
Sandy Ellington-Graves
Tameka Harvey
Seneca Rogers
