Though school leaders indicate a desire for a flexible beginning and ending of the school year, Stanly County School Board Tuesday unanimously passed the 2019-2020 traditional school calendar and the 2019-2020 Stanly Early College High School calendar. Both were drafted by the calendar committee, with input from schools.

For the traditional calendar, the first day of school for students will be Aug. 26 and the last day of school will be on June 10, 2020.

There will be a total of eight professional days, 11 school holidays, six sheltered professional days and 10 vacation days.

The traditional calendar has a total of 180 days of instruction and has around 1,070 hours, said Vicki Calvert, assistant superintendent of personnel and student services.

For the SECHS calendar, the first day will be on Aug. 12 and the last day will be on May 21, 2020.

The calendar has a total of 12 professional days, 11 school holidays, five sheltered professional days and 10 vacation days.

“The calendar committee worked very diligently on creating these calendars,” said Calvert. “There was representation from every school that came together. Each school developed their proposed calendar, their representatives brought it to the meeting and then we worked in small groups and created a district proposed calendar.”

Both calendars can be subject to change due to any weather problems.

About 12 school districts have chosen to go against the General Assembly and to develop their own flexible school calendars, said SCS Superintendent Dr. Jeff James.

While he said SCS are waiting to see what happens with those districts, “it’s apparent that there’s a lot of communities rising up and telling the General Assembly ‘it’s time for school systems to do what’s right for kids, not what’s right for the tourist industry,’ ” James said.

A flexible school calendar would still be the same amount of school time as the current calendar, it will just shift the start and end dates, James said. A flexible calendar will also align to the schedules of the community colleges and four-year universities, so a student who graduates early can start college in January.

The school board will next meet on Tuesday, March 5.