School calendar still undecided after board ties

CRESTVIEW — Next year’s Okaloosa County school calendar remains undecided after neither proposal received a majority vote at a Monday evening School Board meeting.

With Vice-Chairwoman Cindy Frakes absent because of an illness, the remaining four board members divided their votes be-tween the two calendars. Chairman Rodney Walker and board member Cathy Thigpen voted in favor of calendar A, while board members Chuck Kelley and Howard Hill voted for calendar B.

Calendar A is nearly identical to the current school calendar, while calendar B offers an early start date (Aug. 5) that would con-clude the first semester before Christmas break.

The two calendars will now be presented again and voted on at the board’s March 8 meeting.

“I’m really upset with this because I have never seen something that should have been so simple turn into something so complicated,” Walker said after the vote.

The early start date is a new option this fall after the state passed a statute enabling high-performing school districts to begin school earlier than low-performing districts.

Kelley and Hill both said they were voting for calendar B because they saw it as the best option for students.

“I thought there (were) a number of benefits to be gained with an earlier start date,” Kelley said.

For Walker it wasn’t a question of his preference, it was a question of what parents and district staff wanted.

“The public spoke. They chose calendar A,” he said.

Monday’s tie comes more than two months after a calendar committee made up of parents, district staff and union members first began discussing calendar options for the upcoming school year.

Initially, four calendar options were proposed and, after rejecting one of those, parents and district staff were asked to vote on their preferred calendar from the remaining options.

After none of those calendars garnered a majority, the calendar committee voted to hold a runoff and ultimately decided that calendar A be recommended to the School Board for a vote.

That “voting” process was called into question during Monday’s meeting as board members raised a number of concerns about it.

The trouble, all the board members agreed, is parents and teachers were under the impression that their votes would determine next year’s calendar. In reality, their “votes” were part of a survey to help the board get a feel for the public’s preferred calendar before they voted on it.

No official decisions were made about what changes, if any, would be made for the process next year.

The board’s March 8 meeting will be at the district office at 120 Lowery Place S.E. in Fort Walton Beach.