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Welcome to the home of the Citizens Calendar Committee - a grassroots organization supporting traditional calendars for our schools.
Latest Updates
Academic Support: A December 2007 study by the University of Tennessee identified an increase of over a quarter of a billion dollars in tourism spending, tax revenues and tourism related payroll in Tennessee as a result of starting school in late August / Labor Day. In addition, Williamson County Schools experienced $100,000 higher utility costs in August 2007 because of high temperatures. So, besides all the evidence that there is no academic value, we now have concrete evidence of the economic impact of a traditional calendar. See Post Labor Day School Start Dates in Tennessee: An Analysis of the Economic and Tax Revenue Impacts on the Tennessee Travel and Tourism Industry.
Legislative Update: Please see our Legislative Update and Testimony before the State of Tennessee Joint Study Committee.
About Us
Citizens Calendar Committee was formed in November 2005 to stop a sudden push to move the Williamson County, TN public schools to a "balanced" calendar. By quickly forming a network of people and communications, we played an important role in defeating the "balanced" calendar simply by ensuring that both our School Board and the general public were fully informed about all sides of the issue.
In February 2006 the Williamson County School Board rejected the "balanced" calendar for the 2006-2007 school year. That decision was further cemented in November 2006 when the Board adopted a traditional calendar for the 2007-2008 school year. Further, the Board has instructed the calendar committee that future calendars must not start any sooner than the second week of August.
Following these victories, the Citizens Calendar Committee has become mostly inactive - serving chiefly as a watchdog to monitor calendar-related events in our county. However, we have decided to keep this page active in case events warrant a "rapid response" and also as a resource for others. During the six months the committee was in full swing, an opinion poll of web visitors was taken and the results are displayed here.
You can read our blog by clicking here. For the most part, people who are pushing for a "balanced" calendar follow the same playbook, so chances are that your experience will be very similar to ours. We hope that by reading about our struggle you’ll be able to anticipate the tactics that will be used by "balanced" calendar proponents, and perhaps adapt some of our methods for defeating this movement.
In addition, please be sure to check out the FAQs and other links on the right-hand side of this page for other valuable information.
Best wishes in your efforts to ensure excellence for ALL of our students!