Alamance-Burlington school officials are conducting a second survey to gather additional feedback about whether students, families, and staff support starting and ending the upcoming 2025-26 school year and future school years up to two weeks earlier than what North Carolina’s school calendar law currently allows.
The deadline to respond to the survey, which is posted on the ABSS website and being circulated via social media, is 5:00 p.m. today. School board members are scheduled to vote to adopt a school calendar for 2025-26 at their next meeting, which is scheduled for Monday night.
Two school calendar options – one with the earlier start and end dates for 2025-26 and one that complies with requirements set forth in North Carolina’s state calendar law – as well as the results from the survey will be presented for a discussion and vote, according to ABSS chief academic officer Revonda Johnson.
The school calendar law – passed by the General Assembly in 2004 and intended to boost the state’s tourism industry – prohibits all traditional K-12 public school systems from starting the school year before the Monday closest to August 26 and from ending the school year later than the Friday closest to June 11. The state’s school calendar law does not apply to charter or private schools.
State law also requires the calendar for each school year to cover 215 days and include a minimum of 185 days or 1,025 hours of instruction for students.
Within that 215-day period, the state school calendar law also requires N.C. K-12 public schools to have: 10 vacation days; 12 state and federal holidays; and nine mandatory and two optional workdays. Teachers also must have 42 consecutive days off, or an uninterrupted summer break.
ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming had asked the school board last month to consider two calendar options: one with earlier start and end dates; and the one that follows the start and end days prescribed by the school calendar law. During the initial discussion, the superintendent pointed out that about a third of N.C. public school systems have adopted school calendars with earlier start and end dates.
For the current, 2024-25 school year, 29 of the state’s 115 school boards voted to set their own calendars, with earlier start and end dates than what the school calendar law permits, according to a June 2024 report to the State Board of Education.
Unlike the first school calendar survey that ABSS conducted late last fall, the new survey includes specific start and end dates for both calendar options that the board will consider for the 2025-26 school year.
Option 1 with earlier start and end dates
If the school board votes to adopt a school calendar with the earlier start and end dates, ABSS students would begin the 2025-26 school year on Wednesday, August, 13 and end it on Friday, May 29, 2026.
The fall semester for 2025-26 would end on December 19, 2025 – meaning that students would finish their exams and other testing prior to their winter break and Christmas vacation.
ABSS teachers would have mandatory workdays on Wednesday, August 6; Friday, August 8; and Monday, August 11, 2025 prior to starting the new school year. Six additional mandatory teacher workdays and several optional ones would be scheduled throughout the remainder of the school year.
Option 2 that complies with school calendar law
Under the second option that complies with the state’s school calendar law, ABSS students would begin the 2025-26 school year on Monday, August 25 and end it on Friday, June 5, 2026.
The fall semester would end on January 16, 2026. ABSS students would begin exams and testing for the fall semester on Monday, January 12, 2026, or one week after they return from winter break on January 5, 2026.
[Story continues below two calendar options.]
Option 1 Early start
Option 2 Complies with state law
ABSS teachers would have mandatory workdays on Monday, August 18 and Wednesday, August 20, 2025 prior to the start of the new school year. Seven other mandatory teacher workdays and several optional ones would be scheduled throughout the year.
The first survey that ABSS conducted late last year received a negligible response.
Of the 22,412 students enrolled in ABSS at the end of the first month of the 2024-25 school year, their families, and more than 2,000 school employees, the school system’s administration received 1,665 responses to its first school calendar survey, based on figures that Johnson cited during the school board’s latest work session.
Of those, 1,144 respondents (68.7 percent) favored starting and ending the school year earlier than the school calendar law allows, Johnson said, adding that ABSS has an April 1 deadline to submit its school calendar for 2025-26 to the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI).
ABSS chose to go with the minimum required number of instructional hours (1,025) in developing a calendar with the earlier end and start days for the 2025-26 school year, Johnson told the school board last week.
No consensus yet among school board members
School board member Chuck Marsh asked Johnson whether she thought that following a school calendar with earlier start and end dates would benefit ABSS students.
“If we are using every minute to teach and doing our due diligence as teachers, then yes,” the chief academic officer responded. “But, if you look, sometimes we take a day – just a day to talk, or a mental health day…Every minute will count.”
One added benefit that Johnson and other ABSS officials have cited for starting and ending school earlier than what’s currently allowed under the school calendar law is that the school calendar would more closely match the calendars followed by most N.C. universities and community colleges, which typically begin each academic year in mid-August and end in mid-May of the following year.
On the other hand, school board member Avery Wagoner, who joined the board in December, countered, “We have to be cognizant that many of our teachers have made their vacation plans a year in advance [as well as the impact on the state’s tourism industry and possible consequences for defying the law].”
Potential legal ramifications
School board attorney Adam Mitchell, who is with the Tharrington Smith law firm in Raleigh, reminded school board members last week that, while the school calendar law has generated debate and controversy over the past 20 years, the law still prescribes what the start and end dates should be, and there are potential legal consequences for bucking it.
“These other districts, did they go with a local bill, or did they just do it?” school board vice chairman Dan Ingle asked the attorney. “There have been lawsuits for some, and they dropped it because of the lawsuits,” he said, referring to the school boards in Carteret and Union counties, the former of which was among the 29 school systems that initially set their own calendars for the 2024-25 school year.
“They just did it,” the attorney responded. “The initial concern was there may be some repercussions from DPI. Carteret was sued by folks associated with the tourism industry.”
Ingle recalled that Alamance County’s state house representatives, Dennis Riddell and Steve Ross, had previously introduced local bills (i.e., which would’ve affected Alamance County, and possibly a handful of others) to allow ABSS to set its own school calendar. “Representatives Riddell and Ross have sponsored a bill for 10 years or more that didn’t make it past the house,” Ingle said. “That’s what we’re dealing with.”
“Who has standing to sue the district?” school board member Dr. Charles Parker asked Mitchell.
“I think it would be someone who would be able to articulate a harm or connection with this district,” the attorney explained.
School board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves said she has heard from people in both camps – those who support starting and ending the school year earlier than state law allows, and those who support following the law as written.
Ellington-Graves also noted that senator Amy Galey, who represents Alamance and part of Randolph County in the General Assembly, had warned the school board during last week’s joint meeting that also included the county commissioners, “‘It’s going to potentially cost us legal fees,’” if ABSS was to be sued for violating the state calendar law.
“We do have parents and teachers emailing us, saying they have scheduled [vacations] based upon what they anticipated our calendar would be,” the school board chairman acknowledged during the work session. “I think all of us are a little bit disappointed that we only had 1,600 people respond.”
Ellington-Graves said it’s also imperative to give ABSS families time to consider how this potential change could affect them and to invite them to share their thoughts during the public comment period at the meeting scheduled for Monday night.
“We are hopeful, no matter what we do,” the chairman added. “I do know it is on the legislative agenda for the [N.C.] School Boards Association [as well as those for the new state superintendent, Mo Green, and the State Board of Education.]”
The school boards association has recommended giving “local control” to North Carolina’s 115 K-12 public school systems to set school calendars that reflect their individual needs, based on the organization’s 2025-26 legislative agenda.
Ingle asked the administration to include a statement with the survey, explaining what the state school calendar law requires, versus why ABSS is contemplating starting and ending future school years earlier than the law allows. (That language has been incorporated into the current survey.)
“Maybe if they knew 30-some odd districts have already done this, it would give them something to think about,” said Ingle, who had previously represented Alamance County in the state house from 2009 until 2012.
