Councilman, NAACP fault school board for swapping MLK holiday for snow day.
Calling the decision “disrespectful,” Charlotte City Council member Patrick Cannon on Tuesday harshly criticized the school district’s announcement that students would attend classes on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to make up for a snow day.
Also Tuesday, the Charlotte chapter of the NAACP called for local clergy to urge church members to keep their children out of school Monday.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools had planned next Monday as a holiday, but a severe winter storm has closed school so far this week.
In a brief interview, Cannon said the district is showing insensitivity to the legacy of the civil rights hero and to people who organized activities to recognize the holiday. He said some people had planned trips to places like Memphis and Atlanta, to visit well-known civil rights museums.
“It shows a sign of disrespect even if that’s not what is intended,” Cannon said. “More consideration should be given.”
In a prepared statement Tuesday, the NAACP’s Charlotte branch attacked Superintendent Peter Gorman for scheduling a makeup day on the King holiday. “He continues to demonstrate a blatant deliberate disconnect with the African American community,” the statement read.
The group also asked clergy to address the issue with their congregations and ask members to keep their children out of class on Monday.
When asked to comment Tuesday, Gorman pointed to state law that governs how many days students must be in school each year. Gorman said CMS has some discretion to decide what its makeup days are, but only “within a very tight window.”
“We could get to the point where we’re looking at spring break,” he said. “This is the poster child example for why we need control over our own calendar.”
The King holiday is observed the third Monday of each January. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983 over the objections of some lawmakers, including then N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms.
Helms and others argued King should not be honored with a holiday because he never held a public office, and an additional holiday would be a burden on the government calendar.
Initially, just 27 states and Washington, D.C., observed the holiday. But in 2000, 17 years after the law’s official passage, South Carolina became the last state to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a paid holiday.
City Council member Cannon said he has spoken with a school board member about the decision to schedule classes on the holiday. He said he wants the district to change its policy to avoid making up snow days on the King holiday.
“It shows signs of being insensitive to a man who was not just important to a few states but the whole world,” Cannon said of the district’s announcement this week. “It shows poor planning.”