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The Pender County Board of Education has begrudgingly decided to comply with state law on school calendars nearly a year after approving a noncompliant 2026-2027 schedule.\u00a0(Port City Daily photo)<\/p>\nThe Pender County Board of Education has begrudgingly decided to comply with state law on school calendars nearly a year after approving a noncompliant 2026-2027 schedule.\u00a0(Port City Daily photo)<\/p>\n
WILMINGTON \u2014 The Pender County Board of Education has begrudgingly decided to comply with state law on school calendars nearly a year after approving a noncompliant 2026-2027 schedule.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The newly approved calendar will begin on Aug. 24, 2026, with the final day of school scheduled for June 2, 2027; this is a shift from the prior approval of an Aug. 10 start day and May 21 completion, unanimously approved by the school board in March 2025.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: PC Schools sets 2026-2027 calendar that would break state law<\/a><\/p>\n As lobbied for by businesses in the summer tourism industry, state law mandates school start on the Monday closest to Aug. 25. This results in the loss or gain of a week depending on where Aug. 25 falls that year.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, a quarter of the state\u2019s school districts did not comply with the law in 2024-2025, many choosing to enact a schedule with balanced semesters and often high school exams occurring before Christmas break. Union and Carteret counties school districts faced lawsuits as a result.<\/p>\n According to the Pender County school board, it has received a lot of complaints about the calendar from parents and community members recently. Chair Don Hall said he received about 110 emails from concerned parents about the start datesin August.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think people realized, \u2018Oh my god, we\u2019re starting school so early,\u2019\u201d Hall told Port City Daily.<\/p>\n Tammy Proctor, executive director of the Greater Topsail Area Chamber of Commerce, also warned the board of the calendar\u2019s consequences at its meeting on Feb. 5.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur businesses are 95% mom and pops \u2014 they need those students,\u201d Proctor said, referring to student employees who work during the summer. \u201cWe\u2019ve all been in restaurants where there\u2019s a whole section not being waited on because there isn\u2019t an employee there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Proctor said she didn\u2019t intend to bully the district into voting differently, but wanted to \u201cstate the facts.\u201d The tourism industry brings in $200 million in visitor spending and is responsible for 1,000 jobs in the county.<\/p>\n \u201cI know you\u2019re in a rock and a hard place, I know you have deadlines with testing and things like that, but I think as a business community and as a school district, we can be partners on this,\u201d Proctor said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Not all board members thought a compromise should be made, however.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m disgusted by the whole thing,\u201d board member Tom Reeves said in Tuesday\u2019s meeting. \u201cI just can\u2019t believe that two weeks in August would make that much difference for a kid working, scooping ice cream, or a job in restaurants. I just think a child\u2019s education is more important than that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He said he\u2019s learned from high school teachers that balanced semesters \u2013 meaning about the same amount of school days in the fall and spring \u2014 are crucial for being able to ensure students receive the same lessons.<\/p>\n Board member Beth Burns said the conversation has come up many times, and the board voted against a calendar two years ago that would\u2019ve broken the law. While she did vote in favor of the law-breaking schedule last year, she said this time around she would have to side with the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI believe that if we were going to break the law, this would be the one that we probably should break, but it still doesn\u2019t justify breaking a law to me,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Burns said she would support pushing state legislators to change the mandate instead. Some lawmakers \u2014 including Sen. Michael Lee of New Hanover County \u2014 introduced legislation last year to allow districts to start one week earlier, but the bill also would have punished districts that defied the law. It passed the Senate 39-7 but didn\u2019t make it to the House floor.<\/p>\n But for now, the Pender school board members were given five options to pick from, all compliant with the law.<\/p>\n The draft chosen was the fifth option, which has 79 days in the first semester and 95 in the second. First-semester exams would be taken in December versus January; as a result, the draft includes the least amount of workdays among the options (11 versus 12 or 13) and less \u201cbanked,\u201d or cushion, days built in (8.5 versus 13 or 14) \u2014 and, due to the imbalance, first semester students would have 16 less days of learning than second semester kids. The calendar will align with Cape Fear Community College\u2019s spring break, important for dual-enrolled students.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like option five is closest to what we currently have,\u201d board member Jennifer Hansen said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The switch to the draft five calendar was adopted unanimously. PCS staff will post the new calendar to the website soon.<\/p>\n Have tips or suggestions? Email info@portcitydaily.com.<\/p>\n At Port City Daily, we aim to keep locals informed on top-of-mind news facing the tri-county region. To support our work and help us reach more people in 2026, please, consider helping one of two ways: Subscribe\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0or make a one-time contribution\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n We appreciate your ongoing support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pender County Board of Education has begrudgingly decided to comply with state law on school calendars nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-464333","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464333","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}