Fayette County

students will not get Election Day 2004 off from class, since the Board

of Education did not embrace a suggestion by the county elections board

to make Tuesday, Nov. 4, next year a holiday.

Three Fayette

County schools are used as polling places, Superintendent John DeCotis

told board members Monday night, and elections officials felt that past

voting days have proven hectic and intrusive on those campuses.

LaFayette Educational

Center, Braelinn Elementary and Kedron Elementary are the three schools

that will be used in the next general election, DeCotis said. Fayette

County has 36 precincts.

Board members

suggested that closing the entire school system because of inconvenience

at three schools seemed extreme, and DeCotis agreed that administrators

felt like they could handle the situation at the schools.

The request

came as part of the consideration of the 2004-05 school calendar, which

is almost identical to the schedule for 2003-04 already approved. A vote

to give students a holiday on election day would have eliminated a staff

development day already scheduled for earlier in October.

"That

would be 41 days of no relief at all," said board member Janet Smola,

to the delight of teachers and administrators in the audience who appreciated

her sympathy.

Added Board

Chairman Terri Smith, "I just don't like having a holiday in the

middle of the week. It needs to be attached to a weekend."

The board approved

the earlier proposed version of the calendar. The biggest changes remain

a full week of vacation the week of Thanksgiving, and a "winter break"

the last week of February.

Students would

start class Aug. 10 in 2004, and graduation and final day of classes would

be Friday, May 27, which is Memorial Day Weekend.

In other business:

DeCotis read

from a letter written by Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta

Chamber of Commerce, praising the school district for being named a "Blue

Ribbon" school district, among the top 33 percent nationwide as ranked

was a real surprise," he said.

The board

agreed to leave the employee benefits package as is for another year while

it studies alternative programs.

The board

approved a hefty list of employee transfers, along with resignations,

retirements and new hires as the school year nears an end and plans are

set in place for next school year. Seven employees retired, 53 have resigned

for various reasons, 34 new hires were approved and 10 "reelections,"

or nontenured contracts were approved. A whopping 113 transfers were also

okayed, representing the shuffling of personnel as two new schools go

online next fall with budget constraints limiting the number of new outside

hires.