SALISBURY — Thanks to a recent N.C. Senate bill, state-employed educators will receive three bonus annual leave days. The Rowan-Salisbury Board of Education will discuss the impacts of the bill at its Monday work session.

According to the agenda, the extra annual leave days should follow state and local annual leave policies.

Those policies include the following stipulations:

• Annual leave may be used in half days, whole days or hours.
• Classroom teachers that require a substitute may not take annual leave at any time students are in attendance.
• Staff that do not require a substitute may take annual leave with a supervisor’s approval.

New leave days must be used or employees will lose it — the leave will not be paid out.

The board will also receive an update on a 10-day student count for the 2017-18 year. As of Sept. 6, 19,129 students were attending Rowan-Salisbury Schools. Roughly half of that number —8,720 — are attending elementary schools. High school students makes up the second highest group, at 6,163.

The number of students represents a steadily declining student rate. Since the 2013-14 school year, the district’s student population has shrunk by almost 1,000 students. This year’s number is roughly 200 students fewer than last year’s 19,314 students.

According to the agenda, most of those students left the system to attend charter, private, online or home schools. Roughly 295 students made the decision to choose one of these options — the bulk of those, at 143 students, choosing a charter school.

The board will also discuss a back-to-school conference for non-certified staff, a new rounding practice which will take the place of community school visits and a potential January 2018 Board of Education conference.

The board will meet Monday at 1 p.m. in the Wallace Educational Forum Board Room, 500 N. Main Street.