CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Next year’s school calendar is set for Kanawha County students and teachers.
The board of education gave the community four options to vote on during the month of November, and the most popular option received 40 percent of the votes.
This version has school has students beginning on August 19, a later start date than previous years. The school year would end before Memorial Day weekend and would see spring break go from April 5 through April 9.
Thanksgiving break will still be a week long and Christmas break will remain two weeks.
KCS has also decided to frontload as many professional learning days for teachers as they can.
Kanawha County Schools Superintendent Paula Potter says the public spoke.
“Many of the comments prior to voting were that parents wanted school to start later. By offering more professional learning (PL) days prior to students coming, that pushes their start date out a little bit, but we’re not allowed to do all of them that way, Potter said.
“And of course, they like to be out by Memorial Day as well,” she continued.
Board member Jim Crawford says when the board allowed the public vote, they made a decision to listen to the people.
“When you put this out like you do, we’ve got to do what the people ask. I don’t care whether we like it or not,” he said.
You can see the four options here. The option voted on Monday is listed as “Version 2.”