It was the well-to-do vs. the working poor in a debate Wednesday over Palm Beach County’s school calendar. Score one for the workers.
The School Board agreed 4-3 to start school on Aug. 10, 2020, despite pleas from south county parents who objected to the early start, the earliest allowed by the state. The parents said the early date interfered with Northeastern sleepaway camp and family vacation schedules and started school when it was too hot outside for children to play.
“I’m speaking on behalf of hundreds, even thousands,” parent Paige Axel of Delray Beach said. “As little as one extra week [later] would address all the concerns.”
But advocates for the school district’s lowest-paid workers, including bus drivers and cafeteria staff, argued a later start date would create a gap in pay for workers who desperately need the money. These hourly employees don’t get paid over the summer and must wait until school reopens in the fall to earn their next paycheck.
“The hardship is on them,” said Ronald Laporte, an organizer for the SEIU, a government employees’ union. “They are struggling very much to take care of their kids.”
This year, Palm Beach County schools will open to students on Aug. 12. In Broward, school will start on Aug. 14; in Miami-Dade, on Aug. 19.
For Palm Beach County, Aug. 10, 2020, will be the earliest start date since 2005.
School Board member Chuck Shaw called the parents arguing for a later start date “special interests” whom the district did not need to cater to.
“This is an issue that is somewhat unique to South Florida,” Shaw said about the conflict with northern sleepaway camps, which typically end in mid- to late August.
Board member Erica Whitfield said she was saddened that the parents were pressuring school board members to accommodate them.
“This conversation physically hurts me,” Whitfield said. “You want me to vote to take food away from” the workers.
But board member Marcia Andrews said district staff should have worked harder to brainstorm ways to accommodate the many interests that need to be pleased as the school district plans its calendars. She wanted Veterans Day as a day off for students, which staff said could not be done in 2020.
“It was a slap in the face,” Andrews said. “I was embarrassed.”
Vicki Evan-Pare, the Palm Beach County school district’s director of employee and labor relations, said her committee of school staff tried an assortment of ways to get school to start later after the School Board sent the proposed calendars back in April. But she said it was impossible to balance the number of days in each semester and accommodate every interest group that is invested in school scheduling.
She said high school principals emphasized the importance of first semester ending before winter break so teens don’t have to take their end-of-semester exams after a two-week vacation. This forces an August opening, which gets pushed earlier and earlier by the increasing number of days off in the first semester, such as Jewish holidays and a week off for Thanksgiving, which started in 2017.
Starting later than Aug. 10 also poses a problem for the school district’s lowest-paid workers, such as bus drivers and maintenance staff, who would have to go 10 weeks without a paycheck instead of eight. They earn $10.25 an hour, Evans-Pare said.
In 2020, school also will close for two election days: Aug. 25 and Nov. 3. Schools serve as polling places, and the district maintains that students and voters should not mix for security reasons.
In a separate vote, the board agreed unanimously to take another look at the 2021-22 calendar. The staff’s proposal had also called for the first day of school to be Aug. 10 in 2021.
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