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Fort Mill Schools considering shorter summers and more breaks in a school calendar

The district is considering voting on a modified year-round school calendar for the 2025 school year.

FORT MILL, S.C. — Fort Mill Schools is proposing shortening summers for students but adding more breaks in the school year with a new school calendar. 

The district is considering voting on a modified year-round school calendar for the 2025 school year.

Fort Mill School would join Clover School District and York School District 1, which have already switched to calendars with similar changes.

Monday, the district sent out a survey asking parents and staff members how a year-round calendar would positively or negatively impact their lives. 

At a school board meeting on Jan. 10, staff laid out the basic groundwork of a year-round calendar. 

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"What this calendar does, is number one, it allows us to do a 90-90, perfect split before the Christmas break for all of our students," Joe Burke, Fort Mill Schools public information officer said. 

In a traditional calendar school, the 2025 start date would be Aug. 19. 

The year-round calendar would start 10 school days earlier on Aug. 5.

A new calendar would add extra breaks into the school year. The days off for most students are in October and March.

The district says those days would be what they call “remediation days”. 

They’d be to help students who need extra instruction while other students are off.

"We would contract with our teachers and staff needed," Burke said. "Those who choose to come in and work those days, to work with our students, who need room who qualify and need remediation." 

WCNC Charlotte asked families how they felt about this.  

“Unless the entire state has the same schedule and the camps and child care facilities get on board you're just making lives harder and more expensive for people who work," Jaime Lynee said on Facebook. 

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The district said they are looking for feedback like this. 

"Maybe parents come back [saying] there's no way we can deal with two weeks, and then the calendar might change a little bit again," Burke said to the school board. "Maybe those four days get cut down to two, or maybe we look at some other options with this." 

In a Fort Mill parents group, one parent said she loves the proposal because she could afford to go on vacations she doesn’t get to do during busy vacation times with higher prices. 

Students would also still have federal holidays off, and traditional breaks like Thanksgiving, winter break, and spring break off.

"There definitely is going to be childhood -- some child care issues, and things that people are going to have to work through," Burke said. 

Any votes on a calendar would likely happen in the spring. The district votes on calendars two years in advance.

Contact Shamarria Morrison at smorrison@wcnc.com and follow her on FacebookTwitter and Instagram.

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