By Mikiya Ellis-Glunt
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
The Baltimore County Board of Education voted Tuesday night in favor of a post-Labor Day start for the 2020-21 school calendar year.
Lily P. Rowe, a board member representing District six, proposed the after-Labor Day option, which the rest of the board agreed and settled on after discussions. Students would start school Sept. 8, have a five-day spring break from March 29 to April 2, 2021, and could be in school as late as June 22 if weather force school closings for five scheduled school days.
“I move that we adopt calendar option B with the following modifications that we end school on Friday June 18th, use President’s Day Monday as the make-up day and Easter Monday as a make-up day too, if required, and that spring break will begin on March 29th,” said Rowe.
Three different school-year calendars were proposed and presented at the Oct. 8 meeting with each calendar including 182 student days and 190 teacher days. They were structured as follows:
Option A: Pre-Labor Day start with 10-day spring break
Option B: Post-Labor Day start with five-day spring break
Option C: Post-Labor Day start with 10-day spring break
“These calendar modifications allow for all of those considerations to be met without compromising the needs of one constituency group over another,” Rowe said. “It should also be noted that spring break this year also encompasses Passover in addition to Western Easter.”
Throughout the meeting, community members urged the board to include religious fairness that gives equal attention to all holidays, regardless of the calendar year chosen.
“The board already passed a motion to keep professional development days [that] fall on the Jewish and Muslim holidays … ineligible to be converted to make-up inclement weather days,” said Rowe.
Member-At-Large Moalie S. Jose voiced her opinion on the decision as well.
“Having looked at the feedback from the community and the teachers, it’s been pretty 50/50 I would say between pre-Labor Day and post-Labor Day with the teachers, parents and I’m a parent with two kids in BCPS as well,” said Jose.
Board members were concerned about opting for the post-Labor Day start because of personal concerns and past experiences within the education system.
John H. Offerman Jr., member-at-large, noted that the calendar option B was a reasonable choice but said it was important for the board to still consider the calendar recommended by the school staff. The school staff had recommended a pre-Labor Day start.
“I learned actually being in the classroom and that is, every day after Memorial Day, the students sit in that room,” said Offerman, “from then on it gets progressively more difficult to keep students focused.”
Offerman taught school for 37 years and worked as a guidance counselor before becoming a part of the school board.
“I don’t have the data behind me but I think kids coming to school was less frequent the longer we extended into June and this one year where Labor Day is as late as it can possibly be, I would ask everyone here to recognize that this may be a special case where starting before Labor Day is something that we should really still strongly consider in order to get kids out of school before it goes any longer than it actually goes,” said Offerman.
School board chair Kathleen S. Causey voiced support for option B with the modifications and all but two members of the board voted in favor.
Three years ago, Gov. Larry Hogan mandated that state schools start the school year after Labor Day. However, the 2019 Maryland General Assembly voted to restore the authority of local school boards to make decisions about school calendars. Although Hogan vetoed the bill, the legislature voted to override the veto.