Students, parents protest shift to year-round school

The group marched in front of the district’s Greer Education Center before Wednesday’s School Board meeting.

“Nine is fine, no 12 month,” the group chanted.

Despite the protest, district officials said Harmon will be a year-round campus come fall. The district decided May 10 that Harmon and four other elementary schools will convert to a year-round campus for the upcoming school year.

Jeremy Hauser, the district’s academic manager for the Superintendent Schools, the oversight group to which Harmon belongs, said the school has 16 portables on campus and about 850 students.

Hauser said overcrowding was the reason for converting it to a year-round campus.

But Lisa Sua, a parent with two daughters at Harmon, said that class sizes are small at the school and that teachers and students are managing fine. Sua said her children get A’s and B’s and voiced concern that having her daughters in school during the summer will affect their achievement.

“I’m worried about the heat,” Sua said.

“And I don’t feel they need to be going to school for that long.”

District officials said during a May 10 School Board meeting that the regulation determining which schools convert to a year-round calendar will be reviewed.

School Board members met for only about 15 minutes on Wednesday and approved next year’s general fund budget, pending the Legislature’s action on education funding.