Tim Hensley, communications officer for the Hamilton County Schools district, ran into a buzz-saw Thursday when he presented the Hamilton County Board of Education a two-year school calendar that already had the imprimatur of a carefully selected community committee.
If he thought there would be a few polite questions about the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 schedules and then tacit approval before the board voted on them next week, he was wrong. Indeed, there was more heated discussion about the calendars than there was about the state’s Partnership Network agreement that Tennessee Commissioner of Education Dr. Candice McQueen laid out at the board’s work session.
Board members Rhonda Thurman and Karitsa Mosley Jones and, in absentia, Kathy Lennon and Tiffanie Robinson, were not happy about what they saw. Too many stops and starts before Christmas. No Presidents Day holiday. Worry over an inability for parents to get child care. Too few professional development days.
“This,” said Thurman, “is a nightmare.”
Hensley, though, said Friday he was “not surprised” at the reaction, that there had been widely divergent views on the calendar committee, and that it was all part of the nuts and bolts of putting together a calendar.