School Start Date: Montgomery County, Gov. Hogan Debate Flares Again

ROCKVILLE, MD — While Montgomery County school leaders have followed Gov. Larry Hogan's orders to set a school calendar that starts classes after Labor Day, the school system is pointing out what leaders see as flaws in the governor's mandate. And Hogan has fired back with a retort that the problem is caused by "unreasonable teachers union contracts."

In August 2016, Hogan signed an executive order requiring Maryland public schools to start classes after Labor Day and end their school year by June 15. He touted it as a boost to tourism in areas like Ocean city, and said nearly 75 percent of Marylanders endorsed the plan, which offers economic and public safety benefits. The measure takes effect with the 2017-2018 academic year.

The Montgomery County Board of Education sent a letter to Hogan Thursday asking him to take another look at his executive order on school year start and end dates. In years such as the current one when few, if any, snow days are used, the last day of school would be June 8, local officials wrote, which may not have been what Hogan intended. The letter asked the governor "to reexamine this issue in the coming months and provide districts guidance in how to proceed when developing their school calendars for the 2018-2019 school year.” (Read the full letter to Gov. Hogan below.)

Besides ending school early, the Hogan order "severely limits the amount of time available for professional development and teacher planning time during the regular workday and student instructional year," the school board wrote. Montgomery County Public Schools can no longer schedule three full professional days, and instead is scheduling half days in the first and third quarters, and a full professional day in the second quarter.

Hogan spokeswoman Hannah Marr said by email: “The only thing preventing teachers from receiving training are the unreasonable teachers union contracts that have been stealing classroom time away from children for decades. Montgomery County schools have nine full or partial days off for union service days, where students missed classroom time and parents were forced to alter their schedules or find childcare, on the 2017-18 calendar.

“Starting school after Labor Day is a common sense change that benefits students, parents, and teachers, and has the support of the vast majority of Marylanders,” Hogan's spokeswoman said.

After floating the possibility of seeking a state waiver on the first day of classes in fall 2017, Montgomery County Public Schools board members voted last month to start classes after the Labor Day holiday in the fall. In contrast to polls that show a majority of Maryland residents support Hogan's move to require public schools to start classes after Labor Day, most Montgomery County parents, teachers and students wanted the earlier start.

By law, Maryland students must be in school for 180 days of the year. The Board of Education recently adopted an updated calendar for the 2017–2018 school year. The school year will begin on September 5, 2017, and the last day of school is scheduled for Tuesday, June 12, 2018.

While Governor Hogan’s executive order provided school districts with the option of applying for a waiver, he later tightened the restrictions under which local school boards could apply for and be granted a waiver. Montgomery County recently gave up its efforts to seek a waiver.

Educators and school board members who have complained about the ordered later school start date are "whiny," Maryland's governor told a Greater Bethesda Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting on Oct. 21, 2016.

A Goucher College poll showed 67 percent of Marylanders support Hogan's decision.

“You can have whiny people on school boards, it’s not going to change the fact that this is what’s going to happen,” Hogan said, reports WTOP. He added that board members who act against the will of most of their constituents will likely find themselves voted out of office.

Related:

• Maryland Governor Orders No School Before Labor Day
• Starting After Labor Day Will Snarl School Calendar: AACPS

The updated calendar is based on 182 instructional days, which is two more than the minimum required by the state but two less than previous years. The calendar adopted by the board for the 2017–2018 school year is now consistent with Hogan’s executive order that established a timeframe for the school year to begin no earlier than the Tuesday after Labor Day and to end no later than June 15.

Board members also approved a contingency plan that identifies dates that could be used as instructional days, if necessary, to make up school days missed because of emergency and weather-related closings. Two of these days are the first two days of the scheduled spring break, March 26 and 27, 2018. One day, January 26, 2018, would replace a professional development day. Additional contingency dates would extend the school year until June 15, 2018.

»See the 2017-18 Montgomery County Schools calendar

Worcester County, where Ocean City is located, already starts school after Labor Day. However, the school year ends June 16 for students there, which would not meet next year's executive order requiring ending by June 15.

Each local school board is responsible for setting its own calendar.

The full text of the letter sent to Gov. Hogan by the Montgomery County Board of Education:

A Letter to Governor Hogan Asking For Reexamination of School Calendar Executive Order

The Honorable Lawrence J. Hogan, Jr. Governor
The State of Maryland
100 State Circle
Annapolis, Maryland 21401-1925

Dear Governor Hogan:

On behalf of the Montgomery County Board of Education, I am writing to share our perspective on your Executive Order stipulating the start and end of the school year in Maryland. Since you issued your Executive Order on August 31, 2016, the Board of Education has worked carefully and deliberately to adopt a calendar consistent with the guidelines contained in it. In the process of our work, we have discovered several unintended consequences of the parameters set by the Executive Order as it intersects with the Code of Maryland Regulations (COMAR). We are requesting your review of these issues to provide clarity on how school districts in Maryland should proceed in developing school calendars in future years.

Emergency Closings

COMAR requires that school systems take two steps to be eligible for a waiver of the 180-day requirement for the length of the school year. First, school systems must make modifications to make up instruction within the calendar, and second, school systems must demonstrate that the school year has been extended by five days. Without taking these two steps in designing a school calendar, school districts are not eligible for a waiver from the 180-day requirement should they need one in a year of extreme weather conditions. For Montgomery County, we have needed to apply for a waiver 3 times in the last 10 years due to extreme weather conditions that prevented us from opening school 180 days.

In December 2016, we received guidance from the Maryland State Department of Education that in order to be compliant with COMAR and extend the school year by five days at the end of the school year, districts must build these emergency weather make-up days into the schedule before June 15, 20I8, to meet the parameters of your Executive Order. Therefore, in order to fulfill both the requirements established in your Executive Order and under COMAR, effectively the last day of school scheduled on any school district’s 2017-2018 calendar in the state Maryland must be June 8, 2018. There must be 180 days of instruction, the state’s minimum number of days required, scheduled on or before June 8, 2018.

If in Montgomery County we receive no snow, as appears will be the case in the current school year, then that means the last day of school for students would unnecessarily be well before June 15, the final date of school established in your Executive Order. While we do not think you intended for your Executive Order to mandate that the last day of school be June 8, 2018, that is the practical effect of the interaction between your Executive Order and the requirements under COMAR. We respectfully suggest that the unintended consequence of shortening the school year to June 8, 2018, has not been considered in full, and we ask you to reexamine this issue in the coming months and provide districts guidance in how to proceed when developing their school calendars for the 2018-2019 school year.

Professional Development and Planning Time

The other unintended consequence from your Executive Order has been that it severely limits the amount of time available for professional development and teacher planning time during the regular workday and student instructional year. Prior to your Executive Order, Montgomery County Public Schools had three full professional days for teachers scheduled on the school calendar, one at the end of each of the first three quarters of the school year. With the need to ensure that the 180th day of school is June 8, 2018, we no longer are able to schedule 3 full professional days, and instead, are scheduling half days in Quarters 1 and 3 and retaining a full professional day in Quarter 2.

We know from a vast body of educational research that ensuring adequate time for professional development and teacher planning leads to better outcomes for students. The compression of the school calendar limits our ability to schedule this much needed professional development and planning time during the regular student calendar year. Therefore, we are requesting you revisit whether it is essential that schools end by June 15 in order to achieve the intent of your Executive Order and the trade-off in the elimination of professional time for teachers that has come with it.

Future Years

We hope you will consider reexamining the end date of June 15 for the last day of school. As we have shared, ending school by this date has proven problematic for addressing emergency weather-related closings, as well as scheduling critical professional development and planning time for teachers. We urge you to consider alternative approaches in future years to accomplish your objective of maximizing time available for summer vacation while still allowing local jurisdictions to set the structure of the school year according to the operational and educational needs and priorities unique to each district in the state. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you to discuss these issues further and look forward to working with you on this important issue.
Sincerely
Michael A. Durso
President

»Photo from Gov. Larry Hogan's office