Five weeks after asking the Chatham County Board of Education to change the school calendar so students don’t have to walk from spring break directly into Advanced Placement exams, I finally received a response from school board chair Deb McManus. Given the board’s failure, you can imagine the convoluted reply. It began with a laborious description of the calendar process, which has no bearing on whether spring break could have been shifted one week earlier. The centerpiece of this paragraph was how the board considered an “electronic survey” that included responses from many who had no knowledge about the AP exam schedule or any stake in the scheduling conflict.