Wake County Board of Education modifies calendar, adds and removes remote learning days

The Wake County Board of Education has made changes to the spring semester calendar to both add and remove remote learning days.

The board voted 8 to 1 in favor of the new spring calendar, although several members said it wasn’t ideal and that they still want to see if the district’s three cohorts for 4th through 12th grades can be turned into two cohorts, further simplifying the calendar and adding more in-person instruction opportunities for students. Karen Carter voted no.

“I think if there is one thing that is certain about this, it’s there will be more changes,” Board Chair Keith Sutton said.

The main change affecting all students is the addition of two to three asynchronous learning days spread throughout the semester.

The moves are intended to, among other things, increase the in-person learning days for some students and to mostly even out the difference in access to in-person instruction days among the three cohorts for 4th through 12th grades.

But the changes won’t be the same for everyone. Whether a student ends up with more in-person learning days or fewer depends on the school they attend and what cohort they’ve been assigned to, if they’re a 4th through 12th grade student.

For kindergarten through third grade students, who can begin everyday in-person instruction this week, students will have two to three in-person learning days replaced with asynchronous learning days. On those days, for those grades, teachers may still choose to do small group or one-on-one lessons with their students.

Although the district will begin immediately to implement the calendar changes, board members said they doubt this will be the last version of the Spring 2021 calendar.

The district chose to create a single plan for the entire district, rather than create a new scheduled for all six calendars and three cohorts, to prevent confusion when communicating to families who can go to school and when, said Drew Cook, district assistant superintendent for academics.

Depending on which calendar a student’s school uses, a student will have two to three more asynchronous learning days — days in which they will go to school remotely and without live virtual instruction. They days will be spread throughout the remaining semester.

These extra days will help teachers continue to plan and work together on improving instruction this spring, Cook said. Teachers and principals say they need that time to work, he said.

“Yes it’s one less day of live instruction that’s occurring, but all the feedback we get from teachers and principals is the quality of the other four days is improved because of that asynchronous day,” Cook said.

At the same time, two remote learning days already scheduled for March 10 and 11 will be retroactively moved to early January, when students weren’t in classrooms. That means students will have two more days to potentially learn in-person, if they are in the second cohort, scheduled to be in-person during that time.

Cohorts will also switch days at schools on the traditional calendar to allow some students to have more potential in-person instruction.

After spring break, from April 7-9, students in the second cohort will be in-person for class, rather than students in the third cohort, who had previously been scheduled for more in-person days than anyone else. Students in the second cohort previously had the fewest days of in-person learning among the three cohorts. The week of April 12 will now be in-person learning days only for the first cohort, instead of the third cohort.

The changes leaves a five-week in-person instructional gap for the third cohort, which board members said concerned them but did not outweigh their preference for the calendar change as proposed.

Carter opposed the calendar change, citing its impact on the third cohort.

“I’ve also heard from many who have students in Cohort 2, and the current imbalance and the lack of days in school is hurting those kids,” Board Member Chris Heagarty said.

Board Member Roxie Cash voted in favor of the calendar changes but said she didn’t like that kindergarten through third grade students would lose normal in-person instruction days with the addition of the asynchronous learning days. Cash said she wanted those grades to be exempt.

SUPERINTENDENT CONTRACT EXTENDED

The board also voted 8 to 1, with Carter in opposition, to extend Superintendent Cathy Q. Moore’s contract another year. It now ends June 30, 2024, instead of June 30, 2023. It doesn’t include a raise or any compensation changes.

Moore joined the district in May 2018.

The contract extension was a part of the board’s consent agenda, which consists of several measures instead of a single measure.

The board did not discuss the contract extension.

CALENDAR CHANGES

The additional remote learning days vary for the schools on the district's six academic calendars. The changes are below.

Traditional calendar schools:

March 3, March 24 and April 28

Modified calendar schools:

March 3 and May 12

Year-round schools:

March 3, April 21 and May 19

North Wake College and Career Academy, Knightdale High School, Wake Early College of Health & Sciences, and Vernon Malone College and Career Academy:

March 3, April 7, April 28

Leadership Academies:

March 3, April 7 and April 21

Wake STEM Early College:

March 3 and April 28