The Cherokee County School District 2012-13 School Year Calendar has been amended to reflect eight recommended furlough days. These days will be recommended by the Superintendent as part of the 2012-13 Tentative Budget when it is presented to the School Board.
Please see the attached memo and calendar.
After consideration of several options in regard to amending the school calendar, the five school days to be furloughs for 2012-13 were scheduled on Fridays, as well as a Thursday/Friday on the last week of school, as follows:
Friday, Aug. 31: provides a four-day weekend over Labor Day holiday
Friday, Oct. 26: October had no scheduled days out of school
Friday, March 29: March had no scheduled days out of school, and this date provides a longer weekend over the Easter holiday (something frequently requested by parents when Spring Break does not align with Easter)
Thursday, May 23 and Friday, May 24: ends the school year two days earlier than originally planned and allows high school graduation ceremonies to start on Thursday (the addition of River Ridge High School’s first graduating class in 2013 will necessitate the adjustment of the current graduation ceremony schedule at First Baptist Church of Woodstock, the facility used for all high school graduation ceremonies).
By keeping three of the five school-day furloughs in the second half of the year, this allows the district to accommodate any potential snow days that might occur over the winter months without lengthening the school year. The 2/3 split also takes somewhat equal days out of each of the two semesters and still ends the first semester before winter holidays. The Aug. 1 start date was set with the calendar adoption three years ago, and many people have already made plans that would be disrupted by having their children out of school Aug. 1-3, as well as staff development plans and school pre-planning schedules that have already been set.
Additional Staff Furlough Days
Tuesday, Nov. 6, Election Day, was already a student holiday and has been for many years (20 school campuses are used as polling sites for elections and traffic is substantially heavier, especially in a Presidential Election year such as this one), but it was scheduled as a Staff Development Day and now will be a furlough day for teachers; the remaining teacher furlough days are taken from post-planning. Teachers have been emphatic that if days must be cut from their work calendar, post-planning days are much preferred to pre-planning days. Also, this model allows teachers to end their contract days before Memorial Day.
Note: the furloughs apply to ALL employees, based on their contractual days. Bus drivers, school nurses and parapros will only have 5 furlough days, as they only work on the days school is in session, and 5 days have been removed from the normal 180-day calendar. Employees who work 190 days or more will have 8 furlough days total. Furlough days cannot be scheduled during school breaks because the majority of employees, including teachers, are not paid for days they do not work, and thus, no cost savings would be realized.