SPANISH FORK — The Utah Education Association president said she is disappointed that fall break next year for the 94,000 students in Utah County will not overlap UEA's annual convention.
The Alpine, Provo and Nebo school districts scheduled fall break for Oct. 11-12 — weeks before the UEA convention Oct. 29-30.
Wednesday night, the Nebo School District set it in stone by authorizing a calendar for the 2007-08 academic year that does not give the days of the UEA conference off.
"Our teachers who choose to go to the convention can take personal days to attend that," said school board member Bonnie Palmer.
"That's disappointing news if they decided not to support us for (next) year," UEA President Kim Campbell said.
Campbell mailed a letter last week to the Alpine, Provo and Nebo superintendents, asking them to reconsider their academic calendars. She said she never heard back from them.
"The date changes have not been our idea," Campbell said. "Those are because of the convention center."
Convention space at the Salt Palace is limited. The convention center will begin an expansion project in 2008, and "we think the year after that, we can start to settle on a narrow window because the Salt Palace will be (larger)," she said.
Officials in all three districts cited next year's UEA convention dates — a Monday and Tuesday at the end of October instead of the traditional Thursday and Friday at the beginning of the month — among reasons they will not give teachers the holiday.
If Nebo officials were to give the UEA convention dates off, students would return on Halloween. Students and employees would be better served by a holiday at the beginning of October instead of one so close to Thanksgiving break, Nebo school board member Debbie Swenson said.
The reason the districts decided to coordinate their calendars? "We have a lot of employees that live in Alpine and Nebo (districts)," Provo School District student services director Greg Hudnall said. "Probably less than a third live in Provo. When their kids are out of school, we lose a lot of workers" who take vacation to be with their children.
School officials said next year's calendar also coordinates with the school calendars of Brigham Young University and Utah Valley State College.
Officials in the three districts said their teacher unions were OK with the calendar.
"There are several teachers, many teachers that would like to be out to go to UEA," Mike Gowans, president of the Alpine Education Association, said. "There are still several teachers in Alpine School District who attend UEA. I'm not going to tell you 100 percent of my teachers attend UEA, because they don't."
The UEA could not say Wednesday evening how many Utah County teachers attend the convention.
E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com