If you're a Wake County traditional-calendar parent, you're not imagining things if it seems like there are a lot of days off or early-release days on Fridays lately.

Between March 11 and April 22, five of the seven Fridays on the traditional calendar are either complete days off for students or are early-release days. For instance, today is listed as a vacation day.

There are several things that have led up to all these interrupted Fridays.

Here's a quick recap of the Broughton High School and early release votes from today's COW meeting of the Wake County school board .

The board voted 7-1 to recommend keeping Broughton High as an IB school. Most board members praised the quality of Broughton's IB program while Kevin Hill said it would promote inequity and negatively impact IB program at Garner and Millbrook high schools.

Hill argued that there are plenty of schools that would like $180,000 a year to keep their schools competitive.

UPDATE

By a 6-2 vote, the board voted to have the early release days on Friday. Hll and Keith Sutton voted no.

Should Wake County's common early release days be held on Wednesdays or Fridays for the 2010-11 school year?

School administrators are recommending holding the six common early release days on Wednesdays, similar to what's being done this year. The other option presented at Tuesday's student achievement committee meeting is to hold them on Fridays.

The full board could vote on the issue Tuesday.