Persuasive Essay

The Cobb County School Board should not be so quick to change the school calendar as this causes a great deal of disruption for families. In changing the school year calendar three times over the past three years, the board is showing a lack of respect for local parents. Parents with school age children could agree that changes to their family’s schedule can cause a great deal of disruption.

The Cobb County school board recently voted to change the school calendar from a balanced calendar back to a traditional calendar. This decision was made after the balanced calendar had been in effect since the beginning of this school year. As a parent of two children currently attending a Cobb County School, I have again been forced to change my family schedule, as have hundreds of other parents.

In November 2009, the Cobb County school board approved a balanced calendar that would shorten the summer break for students and staff. Prior to making this decision, the school board sought community opinions. They sent out questionnaires to families asking them to choose their preferred calendar out of four choices. The majority of the respondents favored a balanced calendar. The board also conducted a survey of employees and the results indicated that over half responded that they also favored a balanced calendar. The school board decided to change to the balanced calendar; this meant that under the new schedule the school year would begin the first week of August and end right before Memorial Day. In addition to the shortened summer break, students would be out for a week in September and in February.

The decision to change the schedule was also based on a cost saving principle and to prevent teacher and student ‘burn out’ over the course of a long school year. The goal of this new approach was to save money and to provide students and teachers with a more balanced approach to taking breaks from instruction. The new calendar was to go into effect for an initial...