DeKalb’s new “balanced” calendar has school starting Aug. 5, a week earlier than the traditional calendar, and ending on May 29, six days after it.
That will allow a fall break Oct. 7-9 and a winter break Feb. 18-21 on the heels of President’s Day.
The school system is also introducing staff development days on Sept. 20 and March 17, and moving spring break up a week to April 7-11.
Next fall, parents across DeKalb County will face the same dilemma Doug Silverman will.
The father of two from Dunwoody holds a corporate job, and so does his wife. October is a busy time at work, so it’s unlikely they’ll get vacation, yet that’s when the county school system will be sending kids home under a new calendar approved this week.
The “balanced” calendar the school board adopted Monday snips nearly two weeks off summer break and distributes the vacation days in fall and winter.
Silverman hopes to find some kind of camp for the kids or at least a babysitter. If he can’t, he said, “we’ll have to lean on the grandparents.”
Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson favors the new calendar, saying it’s better academically because students forget too much over the long summer break. Surveys showed parents opposed the idea but two-thirds of teachers liked it.
The pace in school with testing and paperwork leaves little time to regroup, plan and take a breath, said David Schutten, president of the Organization of DeKalb Educators, a teachers advocacy group. “Teachers like the frequent breaks because they don’t burn out.”
Cobb County learned how divisive the issue can be when it tried, then quickly abandoned, a balanced calendar. It became fodder for political campaigns and may have resulted in the ouster of at least one school board member. Today, Superintendent Michael Hinojosa is proposing a traditional calendar again for next year while a committee and two board members submit competing proposals.
DeKalb officials said parents played a key role on a committee that devised the new calendar in September. Yet a recent survey showed 59 percent of parents oppose it. Officials had planned to survey parents again last week but said they ran out of time before Monday’s 6-2 vote.
“I don’t think this was pushed,” said Jeff Dickerson, a spokesman for Atkinson. “I got the distinct impression that parents and the community were engaged.”
However, Bob Freeman, a parent on the committee, said parents were outnumbered. He said a teacher, administrator and parent from each of five regions was asked to serve, but only three parents did. He said two of them opposed the balanced calendar, but administrators seemed “predisposed” to adopt it though they presented no research showing academic benefits.
“The district is losing credibility with the community,” Freeman said. “I don’t think they listened to the community.”
Atkinson has said she modeled her proposal on similar calendars in neighboring Rockdale County and Decatur.
Decatur is in the third year of a calendar with shorter summer breaks. Associate Superintendent Thomas Van Soelen said three quarters of teachers surveyed love it and parents have gradually embraced it. Surveys show a third of parents take family vacations during the breaks while a similar proportion of teachers take the time to plan.
Parents were initially reluctant, Van Soelen said, but a committee spent nearly a full school year vetting the idea, and half its members were parents. “We knew from the beginning that we really had to involve parents,” he said.
Decatur saw tardiness drop, attendance rise and student achievement increase after adopting the new calendar, though Van Soelen said he cannot attribute all that to it. Teacher retention and recruitment also improved while personal and medical leave rates, once “alarmingly high,” dropped by half.
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