Pasco County school calendar on hold

An effort to give Pasco County school district students and employees a full week off at Thanksgiving may have fizzled.

A district committee proposed a 2012-13 academic calendar that included that week off, but Superintendent Heather Fiorentino recommended on Tuesday that the school board approve a calendar that would keep the Thanksgiving break at the traditional three days.

The superintendent's move rankled the president of the employees union and prompted the school board to table a vote until Feb. 21 to give board members more time to consider whether to go with Fiorentino's recommendation.

It wasn't clear even to some board members how much difference that extra two weeks of weighing the options will make.

"What's happening at the next board meeting that didn't happen today?" board member Alison Crumbley asked.

District officials already have received complaints from employees and parents who want the 2012-13 calendar approved so they can begin making vacation and other plans.

Lynne Webb, president of United School Employees of Pasco, said school employees long have wanted a full week off at Thanksgiving, something some neighboring school districts do.

Pasco schools traditionally are closed for Veterans Day, Nov. 11, making it difficult to give schools two more days off in the fall semester.

Veterans Day falls on a Sunday this year, providing the opening the calendar committee needed to make the weeklong Thanksgiving break happen, Webb said.

"We had one unique opportunity to provide something that our teachers and school employees have been asking for," Webb said.

In recent years, because of difficult financial times, the district has not been able to reward employees in any tangible way, she said. They have gone without raises several years in a row and this year were required to begin contributing 3 percent of their salaries to their retirement plans.

"This to us is a no-brainer," she said.

Fiorentino and her assistant superintendents, though, gave several reasons for changing the calendar submitted by the district's calendar committee.

They want to ensure students don't end up taking first-semester final exams after winter break. They want to make sure students in one-semester classes put in all the classroom hours required by state law. And they are concerned about working in enough hurricane makeup days.

Assistant Superintendent Tina Tiede said a school calendar is complex because so many factors come into play.

"Sometimes it's not just a matter of doing what we want," Tiede said.

Further complicating the situation, district officials said, is a state law that prohibits school districts from starting the academic year more than two weeks before Labor Day. The earliest the 2012-13 calendar can begin is Aug. 20.

A bill before the Legislature would lift that requirement, but Summer Romagnoli, who tracks legislative issues for the district, said similar bills never went anywhere.

"If the start date can't be changed," board member Allen Altman said, "it takes some of the possibilities off the table."