[SchoolMatters] School starts August 21st, thanks to 3 students in Charlottesville!

[Brian Wheeler]

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This message is not an official communication of the Albemarle County School
Board. It is a private, e-mail-only newsletter written by Brian Wheeler,
At-Large Member of the Albemarle County School Board. 
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[Want to share some public comments on this message?  See the weblog version
here:
http://schoolmatters.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/03/20607_school_ye.html]

The Albemarle County School Board approved the 2006-07 school calendar
tonight
which has a starting date of Monday, August 21, 2006.

Interestingly, if you support our starting school before Labor Day, you can
thank three students from the City of Charlottesville.  I'll come back to
them in a moment...

I have spoken previously about the practice of annually applying for a
pre-Labor Day waiver from the VA Department of Education (DOE) because of
the Kings Dominion Law which says, in the Old Dominion, school starts after
the amusement parks have declared Summer is over (See: The King/Queen of
School Start Dates,
http://schoolmatters.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/02/the_kingqueen_o.html).
For the past 10 years, we have gotten early start waivers approved because
of our track record with bad weather.  Lots of snow days leads to calendar
flexibility.   Seventy-nine of the state's 132 school divisions received
waivers this year.  However, our luck ran out on snow days this year, so we
had to apply for a waiver under a provision related to school systems in
cooperative programs.  If one of your partners has bad luck with weather,
you can piggy back off their waiver request. 

Well, Albemarle thought we had it made because we participate in the
Piedmont Regional Education Program (PREP), a regional program for special
education services.  Including Albemarle, there are 11 school divisions in
PREP.  Would you believe VA DOE told us we had to have at least one student
at EVERY ONE of our 25 schools involved in PREP to qualify for the
cooperative program waiver!  Murray HS has no students receiving services
from PREP.  So we were 24 out of 25 schools towards our waiver request.  

THEN, staff were able to identify ANOTHER connection back to one of our PREP
partners, the City of Charlottesville.  Thanks to three City students
enrolled in the County's charter school, Murray High School, we were able to
convince the VA DOE that we should be eligible for the waiver and thus be
able to decide, on our own, the start date for Albemarle County Public
Schools.  

So... that is why I was able to cast my vote for a school calendar tonight.
Thank you Charlottesville.

Brian Wheeler

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Brian Wheeler
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