As the semester winds down for students across the state and the holiday season kicks into gear, some North Carolina parents have found themselves scrambling for childcare when their children have days off — and wondering why they seem to be out of school more than they’re in it — week after week in the month of November.
November presents a number of challenges to the school calendar. State law requires public schools close in observation of Veterans Day, always falling on Nov. 11. In North Carolina, many districts opt to close the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in addition to the standard Thursday and Friday.
Three of the state’s five largest school districts — Wake, Guilford and Cumberland counties — have just 15 days of instruction in November this year, while other months in the traditional school calendar besides December have an average of about 22 days. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools also has an early release day Nov. 19, leaving no week of November untouched by disruption. Those four districts collectively serve more than 400,000 NC students.
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There’s another day students may or may not have gotten off this year — Election Day. Schools are not required to shut down for Election Day given that it isn’t a federal holiday, an issue that was once split along party lines but is now seeing increasing bipartisan support.
Schools are often used as voting locations and polling places, but that doesn’t mean they have to be closed for students and staff. However, Wake, Cumberland and Charlotte-Mecklenburg all scheduled a teacher workday on Nov. 4 this year and in years past. Guilford opted for a teacher workday on Nov. 3 instead, although other districts did not have any teacher workday scheduled at all that week.
With so many disruptions peppered throughout the month, unlike December which has roughly the same number of days off but in a more consecutive fashion, working parents can find it challenging to find alternative childcare. Lance Fusarelli, a professor of educational leadership and policy at NC State University, told Carolina Public Press such disruptions can be more impactful on single-parent households and low-income families.
Parents who work shift-based jobs tend not to get the same benefits, like holiday closures, paid time off and sick days, as those in salaried positions. That can make it difficult for them to take off work to watch their children who are home from school, especially around the holidays when families are spending more on groceries and saving up for gifts.
“If you’re an hourly employee that’s tough, particularly because you’re generally not making a lot of money anyway, and so you can’t afford not to work,” he said.
“If you are a fair-salaried employee, if you’re in a white collar position — middle income, upper middle income — now you’re not losing any money, because generally your employer is giving you that holiday off anyway, so it doesn’t affect you. It’s a challenge for low-income and working class families where not going to work is not an option.”
While community spaces like the YMCA and local businesses like Fun 4 Raleigh Kids may offer day camps for students out of school, those are rarely free, creating an additional expense for parents who opt to send their children there instead of calling out of work, Fusarelli said.
If the state learned anything from the school closures caused by Tropical Storm Helene and the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that kids learn better with limited interruptions to their school year.
“The research shows fairly conclusively, that the longer they’re in school, the more instruction they receive, the better,” Fusarelli said.
“Particularly if it’s uninterrupted, and that’s particularly beneficial toward students most at risk. So students that are low (socioeconomic status), have limited English proficiency — those most vulnerable populations, generally, the more school exposure they have, the better.”
The main culprit for seemingly random days off are teacher workdays, but Fusarelli said he doesn’t think those are in excess. In fact, North Carolina once required there be 20 workdays set aside each year, but legislators changed that number to 15 in 2005. Now, the Department of Public Instruction says there is no minimum number of teacher workdays at all.
Local nonprofit Save Our Summers voiced support for the reduction in teacher workdays as it sought to put the state on par with teacher compensation elsewhere. SOS also recognized the ways excessive workdays impacted students and families.
“Across the state, parents have complained that school boards were using teacher workdays as a way to prolong the student calendar and shorten the summer vacation,” the site read.
“Working parents, in particular, questioned the scheduling of so many workdays within the student calendar citing daycare and the ongoing interruptions to the learning process as concerns. While the focus of the Save Our Summers movement has been the issue of early school start dates, many SOS-NC supporters following the debate about teacher workdays have begun to better understand the many problems and inequities teachers face in North Carolina.
Perhaps in spite of teacher workdays and mandatory holidays, the state actually ranks as having one of the longest public school calendars. Most states require 180 days of school whereas NC requires 185, just one day less than Kansas at the top spot.
So even though NC children are in school more than the average student in the United States, the holidays can make it seem like “No school November” is more dire than it is.
“It certainly seems like when you have these early-release days, then you have holidays, you have teacher work days, this just seems like, ‘God, is there ever a week when they’re actually going to go to school Monday through Friday?’” Fusarelli said.
“That perception really gets worse in November and December, just because of the holidays.”
Current events have also had an unusual, and unplanned, effect on school attendance this month. In the mountains, winter weather has already led to some school closures and delays this November.
And with the high-profile immigration enforcement operations in Charlotte and Raleigh earlier this month, the surrounding districts reported a surge in student absences as many families kept their children home. Wake County recorded more than 19,000 absent students on the 18th and around 30,000 in Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools on the 17th, WUNC reported.
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