Politics & Government
Week-long Thanksgiving Holiday Proposed for Loudoun Schools
Loudoun County School Board considers scuttling Columbus Day in 2012 and ending the school year on June 7, 2013
Before taking a unanimous vote on the HS-8 high school design during Tuesday nights Loudoun County School Board meeting, members lingered over the proposed calendar for the upcoming 2012-13 school year.
Although a 194-day calendar with a pre-Labor Day start was ready for a final vote, Broad Run District School Board member Bob Ohneiser spontaneously suggested that staff and students could have a full week off for Thanksgiving in 2012. The week would be patched together by moving the last day of school to June 7, 2013, rather than June 6, and by shifting the Columbus Day holiday to Thanksgiving week.
School Board Chairman John Stevens agreed the idea had merit and the board voted narrowly to defer its calendar decision for two weeks to allow parents time to weigh in.
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Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick commented that, “It is a long haul from Labor Day to November,” but that “Parents might do a lot with a week at Thanksgiving.”
Robert DuPree (Dulles) voted no.
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“Do you know how difficult it is to re-gear a child for school after 10 days off?” he said. “It’s not a good educational idea. It’s a good vacation idea.”
DuPree also questioned the transparency of Ohneiser’s last-minute proposal. “We have had five weeks notice to schools” to provide comment on the calendar, DuPree said.
But Board Vice Chair Priscilla Godfrey (Blue Ridge) was, “not too upset that the idea raced to our attention. That doesn’t make it a bad idea. Let’s give the pubic a chance to comment.”
School Board member Brenda Sheridan (Sterling) agreed to, “table it and ask for public input,” but commented that “taking one day away in October is a very long stretch” without a holiday from Labor Day to Thanksgiving.
The proposed calendar will be up for a vote on Oct. 25, when the board will decide whether to add the full week off at Thanksgiving.
The Loudoun County School Board on Tuesday chose “Plan B” as the conceptual design for a new high school at the National Conference Center site, in Ashburn, saying it is safer for students and will have less impact on neighboring residences than “Plan A,” the topic of a community meeting in June.
