Board tables vote on school calendar

Voting on the 21st Century calendar has been postponed to the March 23rd meeting of the Alleghany County Board of Education meeting. However, conflicting opinions were expressed by members of the public during the March 9 meeting.

Concerns and support were expressed about the calendar, which has teachers returning to school in late July and students the second of August.

Parent Jason Adkins expressed concern, noting that that two of his children spend about 80 percent of their time with the local school system, getting on a bus at 6:15 a.m., and returning home about 4:30 p.m.

Adkins remarked, "I get 20 (percent of their time) or less to teach, in my opinion, things on how to be an adult, wash dishes, fold clothes—they're girls—I have one child with straight A's and I've got one that's not doing very well. If you tell me I'm going to have more time to take my vacation…I can take the vacation all four seasons, on the flipside, I can't because I've got one that's going to have to be in the week to help bring her along and then the other one's going to be at home. Also I have a kid that's in Ashe County Schools in the high school there. I'm going to have three different schedules…over the summer. In my opinion, some of the greatest schedules come out of the nine-month schedule. How many are we doing this for? Are we doing this for a handful?" He added, "I know this is not a curriculum change or anything like that."