VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — Students in Virginia Beach City Public Schools will start the next school year before Labor Day.
The Virginia Beach School Board voted 5-4 Tuesday in favor of a pre-Labor Day start. It was choosing between two options, the one they supported and another that would have started school after Labor Day. Board members Kathleen Brown, David Culpepper, Victoria Manning and Carolyn Weems voted “no” on the pre-Labor Day calendar.
The 2024-2025 school year will start Aug. 26, and will finish June 13. Thirteen staff days will be strategically placed throughout the year. The post-holiday option had eight staff days scheduled before school started.
“When I look at teachers and what they face, they need staff days during the school year,” said Superintendent Dr. Donald Robertson.
The approved pre-Labor Day calendar gives students and staff the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off and two full weeks of vacation over winter break.
The approved calendar came as a relief to members of the Virginia Beach Education Association.
“To have the days in the school year to meet the students, assess the students, see the new curriculum and then have the time in the school year to do what they need to do, I think is going to be huge for this upcoming school year,” said Heather Sipe of the VBEA.
Sipe teaches German at Ocean Lakes High School and had voiced her concerns over the proposed calendar options.
“We are working hard every single day and this time is so critical for us to meet the needs of our students,” Sipe said. “Even if it is starting a few days earlier in the school year, the end result is going to be the student success.”
Those not in favor of the pre-Labor Day calendar cited the recent survey in which the majority of the 20,000 Virginia Beach residents who responded said they’d rather have school start after the holiday weekend.
The school board discussed the survey results during its meeting.
WAVY reached out to Virginia Beach City Public Schools for a copy of the survey results. A spokesperson directed us to this link of the minutes from the January 23 meeting.
“We need to do a better job as administration in clarifying that anyone who completes the survey, what those results will mean,” Robertson said. “We’ve some individuals who are viewing those survey results as the gospel so to speak. They should, because we didn’t tell them that it is a piece of data that we will collect.”
The survey went out to staff, students and community members and asked them to weigh in on four proposed calendars, two with a pre-Labor Day start and two with a post-Labor Day start. It was open until Jan. 11.