When tourism officials from communities across North Carolina get together for their annual conference, they can count on one discussion topic rising above the rest.

“Every year, what’s the No. 1 issue sitting up there for the tourism industry? School calendar,” said Kim Hufham, president and CEO of the Wilmington and Beaches Convention & Visitors Bureau.

The same was true this year during the 2025 Visit NC Tourism Conference held in April in Hickory. And it’s been that way, Hufham said, for more than 20 years.

State legislators passed a law in 2004 requiring local school districts to begin classes no sooner than Aug. 25 and end by June 10. “It was meant to prevent school boards from continuing a recent trend of ringing the school bell in late July or early August,” wrote Associated Press reporter Gary D. Robertson in 2007.

But it didn’t prevent those things – some school districts ignore the law. The Pender County Board of Education in March approved a calendar with an Aug. 10 start date for 2026-27.

“This decision was made with a focus on what is in the best interest of our students and staff, ensuring a balanced and effective academic schedule. One of the most important factors in the decision was aligning the first semester to end before the holiday break, a priority expressed by many stakeholders who were concerned about students taking exams after returning from winter break,” according to a Pender County Schools statement emailed to the Business Journal. The email also said the calendar “provides a more balanced distribution of teacher workdays throughout the year” and increases instructional time to five more days than the current 2024-25 and 2025-26 calendars, both of which have 169 days.

A new bill introduced in the state Senate in March could offer more flexibility, possibly alleviating what Hufham described as “kind of a tug-of-war” between school officials and the tourism industry over the years. That’s because from the tourism side, the closer to Labor Day that schools can start, and the closer to Memorial Day they can end, the better. It’s not just for visitor dollars, Hufham said, but for the high school workforce businesses depend on to staff their establishments in the busy season.

Paul Robertson, owner of the Kure Beach Pier, said he doesn’t worry too much about the school calendar. But when it comes to the high school students who work there, he said, “Couldn’t do it without them.”

Local discussions about the school calendar have gotten heated over the years. But from the tourism workforce standpoint in New Hanover County, it’s not as much of an issue these days as it has been in the past; recent calendars have followed state law. Classes started Aug. 27 this school year in New Hanover, and in November last year, the board approved an Aug. 26 start date for the 2025-26 school year.

The N.C. School Boards Association’s position on the issue has been that local boards “are in the best position to determine the most appropriate school calendar for their district by weighing the unique factors of a community’s demographics, climate, culture and economy. NCSBA recommends that the General Assembly provide public school units which lack the authority to determine school start and end dates with more local control to do so in order to maximize student outcomes and best meet the needs of local communities.”

In March, three North Carolina senators, all Republicans, announced that they had filed a bill “to provide additional school calendar flexibility to local school districts and hold school district officials accountable if they defy the school calendar law.”

The group included Sen. Michael Lee, R-New Hanover, who was elected Senate majority leader in April, Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, and Sen. Amy Galey, R-Alamance.

“I’ve heard from school districts across the state that have wanted to adjust their calendar to meet their needs but didn’t want to break the law,” Lee stated in a news release. “While our current school calendar law provides adequate flexibility for the vast majority of our districts, it’s appropriate to provide districts another option.”

The state board’s position also contends that, because of the required later school start, “first semester exams are taken after winter break, despite the common understanding that this decreases content retention and student performance.”

Senate Bill 754 would give school districts two options for starting the school year. It keeps the current school calendar law – starting school no earlier than the Monday closest to Aug. 26 and ending no later than the Friday closest to June 11 – and adds the option to begin no earlier than the Monday closest to Aug. 19 and end no later than the Friday before the last Monday in May.

According to Berger, the bill “balances the desire of some school districts to start the school year earlier while still supporting our local businesses dependent on summer tourism.”

In terms of consequences for districts that ignore the law, the bill could mean that the Superintendent of Public Instruction would be required to investigate and report any violations of the law to the State Board of Education. If a local board doesn’t address the violation, according to the news release from Berger’s office, then its central office funding would be withheld until it became compliant.

Another potential consequence allowed by the bill: Any person who lives or owns a business within the local school district boundary would be able to bring a civil action against the local school board if it defies the school calendar law, the release stated.

“We must take the appropriate steps to hold school districts that break the law accountable,” Berger said in the release.

As of press time, the state senate had not yet passed the bill.

“Hopefully, this is a compromise that can work both ways,” Hufham said. “Yes, it does shorten our season by a week, but it’s better than the alternative, which could have been all the way back to the first of August.”

The state school boards group said there’s no evidence of a negative impact on the travel and tourism industry in North Carolina brought about by school calendar issues, citing the most recent state calculations of tourism dollars.

In August, state officials announced that travel spending had set a state record in 2023 (the latest available), rising nearly 7% to $35.6 billion.

“That growth followed a record-breaking increase of 15% in 2022. Direct tourism employment also increased statewide by 4.8% to 227,000,” a news release stated.

But the push to align school calendars more closely with tourist season isn’t about greed, Hufham said. For some, it’s about survival. Timing can be crucial to small businesses that rely on tourism to keep their doors open, Hufham and others in the industry say.

“So many of them, if they don’t make it in June, July and August, there is no way they’re going to make it during the off-season,” she said. “That’s when they really have to make their money, stockpile it and hope for the best during the off-season.”

The hundreds of thousands of people who work in the state’s tourism industry want the best education for their children as well, said Vince Chelena, executive director of the N.C. Travel Industry Association.

“We also understand the plight of those families who own and operate small businesses and how they have to make their income within a certain period of time in the year,” Chelena said, “because let’s face it, there’s not a whole lot of people coming down to Wilmington in December and January.”

Most of the tourist dollars spent in the Wilmington area and its beaches come from within the state.

“Our largest feeder market as a whole is North Carolina,” Hufham said, with the Raleigh-Durham area usually claiming the top spot and the third and second rankings flipping back and forth between the Triad and the Charlotte metro area.

“When those school districts in our feeder markets go back in early August,” she said, “it affects the traffic coming here.”