Rockdale County Public Schools' 2012-2013 school year calendar, which was presented at Thursday night's school board work session, will go up for a vote at the Feb. 16 school board meeting.

Under the proposed calendar, which has 180 student days and 190 teacher days, classes would start for students on July 31 and end May 23, 2013.

The fall break would be the second week of October, with another week off during Thanksgiving in November, and two weeks off from Dec. 19 to Jan. 2. The February break would be the third week of the month, and the spring break would be the first week of April.

The calendar also reserves two week-long times for parent-teacher conferences, Sept. 10-14 and February 4-8

Chief Academic Officer Rich Autry said a voluntary survey was posted on the RCPS website Jan. 19 to Feb. 6 with 216 responses to the proposed calendar. Out of that, 98 were parents, 3 students, 73 teachers, and 40 RCPS non-teaching employees.

Autry said 93 respondents were favorable to the proposed calendar.

The comments and suggested changes that were made fell into three main areas, said Autry: to move the fall break to the first week of October, concerns that winter break would be eliminated - which was false, said Autry, and comments that the calendar was starting too early or ending too late.

He explained the first week of October was the testing date state-wide for the Georgia High School Graduation Test, which has to occur in the same week across the state.

As far as the start and end dates, he said "We're starting as late as possible and ending before Memorial Day."

School board member Jean Yontz asked how many possible responses the survey could have gotten and how word of the survey was spread. RCPS has about 16,000 students.

"It could have been tens of thousands," Autry said. He said local media and the school's website were ways RCPS spread the word about the survey.

Yontz said she had heard questions from people asking why the calendar wasn't put out for comment. "We actually do have that out there for anyone to see," she said.