Teachers’ choice for 2020-21 calendar approved by board

The Lenoir County Board of Education has unanimously approved a traditional school instructional calendar for 2020-2021that was overwhelmingly endorsed by LCPS teachers and other employees.

All but about 200 students in the district go to school under the traditional calendar. Lenoir County Early College High School operates on a calendar that aligns with Lenoir Community College’s schedule. The school board also approved a 2020-2021 calendar for Early College at its Jan. 6 meeting.

Under the traditional calendar, the school year will begin for students on Aug. 24, 2020, in accordance with state law, and the last day of school for students will be May 28, 2021. Instructional breaks are largely unchanged – three days around Thanksgiving in November, about two weeks around Christmas and New Year’s, a week after Easter and teacher workdays in months where there are no holidays.

The calendar was the overwhelming favorite of three choices LCPS employees were asked to vote on, according to Associate Superintendent Frances Herring, who explained the selection process to the school board. “Option C came in far ahead of the other options, which was good to see,” she said.

The traditional calendar combines the district’s desire to finish the first semester and high school exams before the Christmas vacation with state requirements for designating opening and closing dates within a set range, for achieving a minimum of 1,025 instructional hours, for calendaring teacher workdays and for providing the required number of holidays and vacation days.

The only significant change in the 2020-2021 calendar from recent years is the shift of commencement exercises at LCPS’s three traditional high schools from a Saturday to a Friday afternoon, a change that keeps graduating exercises from complicating Memorial Day weekend plans for families.

School ends for students on Friday, May 28, and the Class of 2021 at Kinston, North Lenoir and South Lenoir high schools will graduate that afternoon.

“We’ll release (students) at noon and we’ll have the three graduations at 1, 3 and 5 (o’clock),” Herring explained.

“High schools have taken exams and have already completed that, so they are already finished at that point,” Superintendent Brent Williams added. “Our high schools are strongly in support of this (schedule). This works for them.”

Teachers at schools on the traditional calendar – all but Early College High School – will return to work on Aug. 10; their last workday is June 8, 2021.

Early College is housed on the campus of Lenoir Community College and its students begin taking LCC courses early in their high school career, so the Early College calendar is nearly a duplicate of Lenoir Community College’s.

Teachers there will return for the 2020-2021 school year on Aug. 3. Classes will resume Aug. 10 and school will end for underclassmen on May 14, 2021. Graduation day for the Class of 2021 is scheduled for May 5, 2021.

Printable versions of both the traditional and Early College calendars for 2020-2021 are posted on the district website at www.lcpsnc.org.