Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools has canceled school for students Wednesday, March 8 due to a lack of staff.

The expected shortage is a result of a large number of faculty and staff participating in the National Women’s Strike.

“We began to get requests, probably well over a week ago of folks who wanted to be out for (the strike),” interim superintendent Jim Causby said. “We began to get the idea that it would be a significant event in terms of people not working.”

The National Women’s Strike is an international event in which participants will strike for a day, protesting for issues such as gender and racial equality and a higher minimum wage.

“We did some polling to see what kind of numbers of folks we were talking about,” Causby said. “We don’t know the final number but it appears to be well over 20 percent of our work force.”

According to a press release put out by the district, the decision was made for safety reasons and is not an endorsement of the demonstration.

“While we fully support our folks’ right to be involved, we did not make the decision because of that,” Causby said. “We made the decision because of safety factors and the fact that if we can’t get kids to school safely and we don’t have someone covering classes, that’s a much more serious situation.”

Students will not be required to make up this day as the system is on schedule to meet the required number of instructional hours for the school year.  All athletic events will occur as scheduled.

As a result of the teacher workday, the delayed opening planned for Thursday, March 9 will be canceled.

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