Aug. 28? Or Sept. 5? June 15? June 20? Or June 14?
The Montgomery County Board of Education will have these dates in mind when it ponders what school calendar to adopt for the 2017-2018 school year.
“We’re trying to sort this out sooner rather than later,” said school board member Patricia O’Neill, who chairs the board's Policy Management Committee, which presents draft calendars to the full board. A decision is likely by the full board in October.
“There are some private schools that would like to know what we’re doing, because they follow the MCPS calendar,” O’Neill said.
Determining school calendars might have been considered a mundane chore for local school boards. Doing so became anything but on Aug. 31 when Gov. Larry Hogan issued an executive order requiring the state’s school districts to fit a school year’s mandated 180 days of classes between Labor Day and June 15. The new school year lengthen the summer break for students, helping businesses that rely on tourism.
But the dates also wrest control of the calendar from local school boards, which take religious holidays and the possibility of inclement weather into consideration when scheduling days off.
“We put a lot of time and energy into making sure we have community outreach on our calendar, that we have community input, union input and student input,” board member Rebecca Smondrowski, who also serves on the Policy Management Committee.
If school districts want to start earlier or end later, they can seek an annual waiver from the Maryland State Board of Education, according to Hogan’s order.
That presents a conundrum for Montgomery County Public Schools. In years with a lot of snow, MCPS has asked the state board to waive its 180-day requirement so the district doesn’t have to lengthen the school year make up for days lost to bad weather. The state board has been reluctant to grant those waivers because its members want the county to make up days within its own calendar, school board member Philip Kauffman said.
“That’s part of the flexibility we’re losing with the governor’s letter,” Kauffman said.
Two lawmakers, Sen. Paul Pinsky of Prince George’s County and Del. Anne Kaiser of Calverton, asked the state attorney general whether the governor exceeded his authority with the executive order.
Adam Snyder, chief counsel for opinions and advice in the Attorney General’s Office, said the governor has broad constitutional and statutory authority to direct executive branch actions. However, the Labor Day executive order directed state and local boards of education, which are independent bodies that are not directly answerable to the governor. No judicial precedent exists that delineates the governor's authority with school boards.
“I cannot say unequivocally that the Labor Day executive order exceeds the Governor's authority, but I believe it likely that a reviewing court, if presented with the issue, would conclude that it does,” Snyder wrote.
The lawmakers also asked whether the General Assembly may pass legislation that overrides an executive order. Snyder said it may.
Earlier this month, school board President Michael Durso doubted that legislators would take on Hogan on this issue.
“I don’t know how much stomach they have in taking on a very popular governor,” Durso said. “And with legislation, it would need to be veto proof.”
O’Neill said the 2017-2018 school year could be one of the easiest for Montgomery County to comply with the governor’s order. There’s no Election Day and only Rosh Hashana falls on a school day. Other holidays, such as Yom Kippur or Eid-al-Adha, do not fall on school days.
The three members of the Policy Management Committee approved three potential calendars to bring before the full eight-member board. Two options could require waivers from the state.
The first option meets the Hogan executive order with a start date of Tuesday, Sept. 5, the day after Labor Day, and ends Friday, June 15. The calendar includes three professional days when teachers must report to school but students are off.
The calendar provides six days off for spring break, but three are “contingency” days to make up for closures due to inclement weather. The total number of days is 183. The calendar includes other contingency days from Monday, June 18, through Friday, June 22.
The second option, which would need a waiver, also starts on Sept. 5, but ends on June 20. It also includes three professional days. Whereas the first option had only a single day off for President’s Day, the second option provides two days, and the second day could be used as a contingency day. The 184-day calendar also adds a non-instructional/contingency day on April 27.
It also ends with five contingency days: Thursday, June 21, through Wednesday, June 27.
The third option, which also would need a waiver, follows Montgomery County’s standard practice. The 184-day calendar starts on Aug. 28 and ends on June 14. The Easter break is a day longer, and the days aren’t considered contingency days. It adds a non-instructional/contingency day on May 4. Five contingency days run from Friday, June 15, through Thursday, June 21.
O’Neill said she had received about 300 comments about the school calendar since the governor’s executive order. She said the response has been mixed.
Some comments expressed concern that summer camps close in the middle of August because the college students who staff them return to their own schools. That means families, including those who use camps as a form of day care, could be left without options for the final weeks of summer.
Kauffman said he had also heard from people worried about finding day care.
“I’d say the comments have cut both ways,” Kauffman said.
O’Neill said that part of the reason county schools start in mid-August is because Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate exams are in early May. A later start time would leave less time in the year to prepare, she said.
“And so you lose a week of instruction,” she said. “It puts our children at an academic disadvantage.”
