A Senate Study Committee charged with looking at the possibility of backing up the start of the school year will be back in hearings in a few weeks– looking for answers they didn’t find in their first meeting.
Committee Chairman, Sen. Steve Gooch (R-Dahlonega) recently announced that the second meeting of the Senate Study Committee on Evaluating the School Year Calendar of Georgia Public Schools will be held on Wednesday, November 14. At the conclusion of the first meeting, Sen. Gooch stated that the committee was looking for reasons why the summer has shrunk to two months, and how a later start would impact students in Georgia’s public schools. “What we heard, instead, centered on local control,” Gooch said that day.
The Senate Study Committee on Evaluating the School Year Calendar of Georgia Public Schools was created by the passage of Senate Resolution 1068 during the 2018 Legislative Session. The committee is tasked with reviewing the effect of varied school start dates on the travel and hospitality industries while ensuring that there will be no disruption to the education of Georgia’s children.
The committee includes Sen. Mike Dugan (R – Carrollton), Sen. John Wilkinson (R – Toccoa), Sen. Jack Hill (R – Reidsville), Mr. Grier Todd, appointed by Lt. Governor Casey Cagle, Deputy Commissioner of Tourism for the Georgia Department of Economic Development Kevin Langston, Georgia Chamber of Commerce designee Michael Owens, Director of the Georgia Travel Association Kelsey Moore, Executive Director of the Georgia Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus Jay Markwalter, Camila Knowles, appointed by Governor Nathan Deal, and State Board of Education designee Scott Johnson.
According to Gooch, 11 states have guidelines around start and end dates for the school year, while 39 allow districts to make that decision. Gooch and others on the committee have said they heard from parents in their communities asking for later start dates.
However, the first meeting opened with representatives of the Georgia Department of Education (DOE) stating that they have no control over when school starts in each district.
“We have zero authority over the development of school calendars,” said Matt Cardoza, assistant policy director for the State DOE. He went on to state that all calendar decisions are left up to the local school boards, but added that schools time their calendar around testing. According to officials, mandatory state standardized tests (Milestones) must be given sometime between early April to the middle of May.
The committee must report its findings on or before December 1, 2018.
