After the results of a survey came back strongly against starting school before Labor Day, the Suffolk School Board voted Thursday to continue post-holiday starts to the school year.

The board voted 6-1, with Sherri Story the lone vote against, to adopt the results of the pre-Labor Day study and continue with the current calendar of starting classes after Labor Day for 2020-2021.

More than 5,000 people participated in the survey, with 56 percent overall who favored starting school after Labor Day, with just 39 percent wanting to see school start up to two weeks before that.

All Hampton Roads area school divisions, as well as those on the Peninsula and nearly all of the ones in the Northern Neck currently start school after Labor Day. Most school divisions in Virginia that start prior to Labor Day are localities west of Richmond.

Supervisor of Data and Research Shawn Dickerson told the board that the group of people most opposed to the pre-Labor Day start was parents, with 58 percent of them opposed. Community members, 600 of whom participated in the survey, were the only group who did not respond with an overwhelming preference, he said.

For those who supported starting school prior to the holiday, Dickerson said the most common time frame was 10 to 14 days prior, with the least common being one to five days.

Story noted many people did not favor starting before Labor Day because they thought the summer would be shortened, since nothing on the survey indicated how the schedule would be affected by an earlier start to the school year.

“I don’t think that the survey communicated (that),” Story said. “It just said, ‘Do you want to start earlier?’ Well, no one wants a shortened summer. If we start earlier, and then end at the same time, then that’s shortening summer, right? So, I get that. And many, many, many of those comments from people who said, no, they didn’t want to start (early). That’s what they indicated — ‘Well, we don’t want a shortened summer.’”

Dickerson said no alternative options were presented to survey takers.

“The survey was — at the board retreat — was asked to be a litmus test, basically, of how the community felt about the change,” Dickerson said.

The only indication about a possible schedule change was at the beginning of the survey, in which it indicated that the school calendar would still be 180 days from the start of the school year.

Board chairwoman Phyllis Byrum said she was pleased with the large response to the survey, with 5,188 overall responses — 2,796 from parents, 1,507 from staff members, 600 from community members and 285 who classified themselves as “other.”

“I thought that was excellent,” Byrum said. “We do a lot of surveys, and I think this is one of the best responses I’ve seen to any of them.”

Story said incoming superintendent Dr. John B. Gordon III should be a part of any schedule change discussions. In Chesterfield County, where he currently serves as chief of schools, students had a staggered start this year, but all started in the week following Labor Day, except for two elementary schools in Chesterfield County that operate on a year-round schedule.

Vice Chairwoman Dr. Judith Brooks-Buck said she assumed that survey-takers understood that starting school earlier would mean getting out of school earlier.

“For me, the most overwhelming response was that there were family vacations already planned for August,” Dickerson said. “And that’s taking away from their family schedule, family vacations, because that’s when they’ve always done it, in August.”