Wake year-round students will have Election Day, Juneteenth off

Election Day and Juneteenth will now be days off for all Wake County Public School System students this year, following a final vote from the school board Tuesday and concerns about school safety on Election Day.

Multi-track, year-round schools will now have the days off, without making any other calendar changes. Earlier this month, the board had discussed swapping the Oct. 10 teacher workday with the Nov. 8 school day, but teachers favored keeping the workday, which aligns with teacher workdays across the school system. June 19 — Juneteenth — will also be a day off.

The schools will use two of their three banked days — intended as a cushion for inclement weather days — to get the days off.

Board Member Karen Carter voted in favor of the change but said she still had reservations about what would happen if the schools had too many inclement weather days, particularly if remote learning days were used instead.

The school board approved canceling school for students on Election Day for all but some of the year-round schools earlier this month as a part of an effort to reduce safety concerns at the dozens of schools that also serve as polling places.

On election days, schools don’t follow their typical visitor-vetting practices, and voters may enter through side doors closer to polling areas in cafeterias and gymnasiums.

A group of parents began pushing for the change in May, after the primary election.

Then, after a gunman massacred more than 20 students and educators at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a week later, they pushed more.

“I came home from work and sat down and I just said, ‘I have to send this to the entire school board,’” said Jennifer McMullin, then a Wakefield Middle School parent.

Parents noted their children felt uncomfortable during the May 17 primary election upon seeing voters walking through hallways or in the cafeteria while students were grabbing their lunches.

“It just feels like maybe as we're moving along in time, it's becoming less safe to just kind of bank on” people always acting right, said Kirstin Morrison, a mother of a Holly Grove Elementary School student and founder of Safe School Polling. “We just did need safety precautions. And if we're going to use schools with kids in session, I feel like there should probably be some extra safety precautions in place since the schools can't follow their normal protocol.”

During the 2018 general election, Morrison’s group notes, nearly 77,000 people voted at a Wake County Public School System school.

School system leaders say they plan to keep schools closed on Election Day in future years.