Superintendent's Calendar Recommendation for 2026-27

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Back in the 90s mcps had 5 built in extra days. [/quote

Correct. We also did not have all of the religious holidays we've added in recent years:
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur (we may have had those)
Diwali - new
Lunar New Year
Eid (two separate days)
Passover

I realize we don't always have ALL of these days in a single year (depending on whether they fall on a weekend), but that is a total of seven added holidays.
In addition, there are two full teacher professional days (one in fall and one in spring) that have been added - I think they might be required by MD Blueprint? - they are definitely state mandated because 1/2 of the training on each of those days is mandated the state.

So that would be a total of nine days.
Then we added Transition Day, which automatically cut down on one school day (we had 182 days prior to last year when we started that).
So, you can see that if we returned to basing school closures only on operations (rather than religion), we could easily return to a 184 day school year.
Without Transition Day, we'd only be looking at 2-3 more days.

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur were definitely days off in MCPS in the 90s. My synagogue used to hold services at Wootton on those days and other synagogues held services at Churchill and other high school auditoriums. Passover would often align with spring break.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Was it all a fake-out? If this had been the original recommendation there probably would have been a lot of grumbling about day before Thanksgiving or maybe something else.

Was the 1st recommendation just to make us see this as vastly superior, or am I giving him too much credit?

I think he was trying to get the union to negotiate on the grading and planning days, and it didn't work.

Seems that way. It’s a stupid calendar because McPS has no intention of using the Passover and Eid teacher non instructional days as makeup days and if there is more than one snow day (which there probably will be) we’ll soon be back at the situation where McPS has to ask for a waiver again to approve them not providing 180 days of school to our kids.

They made Passover a day off as too many teacher appropriately took off. Why not remove a Christian holiday?

The only actual Christian holiday on the calendar is Christmas. There is a 0.0% chance any school district anywhere in this country will plan for schools to be open on Christmas Eve or Christmas. Neither Good Friday nor Easter Monday are a Christian holiday, but those are days off because Maryland state law requires it. As a Christian I would have no issue with them changing that law, but MCPS can’t unilaterally do anything with those days.

I wouldn't care if they made it a school day, but it's completely bizarre to claim that Good Friday is not a Christian holiday.

+1

Also it is a little disingenuous to imply that Christmas only counts as one day. Are there any schools districts! that have off the 25th and no other days? Come on, the entire winter break is designed around Christmas. New Year's Day, while mostly understood as secular, originated from Roman practices and is culturally Christian (fwiw Jan 1 is also a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church). No US school district would so much as contemplate having school on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. And that's fine and not a bad thing but let's not pretend the structure of school calendars isn't mostly intended to cater to the traditions of Christian people.

So you think that Christmas/Christmas Eve and New Years Day should be the make-up day options? This is the type of exhausting virtue signaling that led to the calendar we currently have where kids are in school through mid-June and there is only 1 day built into the calendar for snow days even though we routinely have 5+ snow days a year.

Why not?

I am the PP that the above PP was responding to (though they didn't seem to actually read what I said). I said, "No US school district would so much as contemplate having school on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. And that's fine and not a bad thing" Same applies to Christmas Day. To answer your obvious question, operating schools on those days would be pointless given the massive staff and student absences that would occur. Christmas Eve as well, especially since Christmas Eve is the main celebration day for many Latinos.

So, basically, you are justifying why MCPS/Taylor/BOE have MCPS as a Christian based school system.... not surprising given the number of hate crimes that go unaddressed.

New Year’s Day is not a Christian holiday. It may be a day of obligation for Catholics, but that has no bearing on the school calendar. There are plenty of days of obligation where school is still in session. You’re literally only talking about Christmas Eve/Day, which at this point are built into winter break. So are you suggesting that winter break be moved to different weeks to make your point? Good Friday and Easter Monday are days that state law mandates schools are closed, and MCPS is not responsible for that. There are also plenty of Christians that have no issue with that law being changed, but as of now it’s still on the books.

Nobody has suggested this. It's interesting though how triggering it is for some of you to read about the ways in which our calendar is structured around Christian traditions and culture. Why do you continue to claim I think that is a bad thing (given I specifically said it wasn't lol)? It's obviously done for operational reasons and won't change.

This post isn’t responding to you, it’s responding to the poster who specifically said why not use Christmas and New Years as make-up days. Take a deep breath, you are not the main character here.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Was it all a fake-out? If this had been the original recommendation there probably would have been a lot of grumbling about day before Thanksgiving or maybe something else.

Was the 1st recommendation just to make us see this as vastly superior, or am I giving him too much credit?

I think he was trying to get the union to negotiate on the grading and planning days, and it didn't work.

Seems that way. It’s a stupid calendar because McPS has no intention of using the Passover and Eid teacher non instructional days as makeup days and if there is more than one snow day (which there probably will be) we’ll soon be back at the situation where McPS has to ask for a waiver again to approve them not providing 180 days of school to our kids.

They made Passover a day off as too many teacher appropriately took off. Why not remove a Christian holiday?

The only actual Christian holiday on the calendar is Christmas. There is a 0.0% chance any school district anywhere in this country will plan for schools to be open on Christmas Eve or Christmas. Neither Good Friday nor Easter Monday are a Christian holiday, but those are days off because Maryland state law requires it. As a Christian I would have no issue with them changing that law, but MCPS can’t unilaterally do anything with those days.

I wouldn't care if they made it a school day, but it's completely bizarre to claim that Good Friday is not a Christian holiday.

+1

Also it is a little disingenuous to imply that Christmas only counts as one day. Are there any schools districts! that have off the 25th and no other days? Come on, the entire winter break is designed around Christmas. New Year's Day, while mostly understood as secular, originated from Roman practices and is culturally Christian (fwiw Jan 1 is also a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church). No US school district would so much as contemplate having school on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. And that's fine and not a bad thing but let's not pretend the structure of school calendars isn't mostly intended to cater to the traditions of Christian people.

So you think that Christmas/Christmas Eve and New Years Day should be the make-up day options? This is the type of exhausting virtue signaling that led to the calendar we currently have where kids are in school through mid-June and there is only 1 day built into the calendar for snow days even though we routinely have 5+ snow days a year.

Why not?

I am the PP that the above PP was responding to (though they didn't seem to actually read what I said). I said, "No US school district would so much as contemplate having school on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. And that's fine and not a bad thing" Same applies to Christmas Day. To answer your obvious question, operating schools on those days would be pointless given the massive staff and student absences that would occur. Christmas Eve as well, especially since Christmas Eve is the main celebration day for many Latinos.

So, basically, you are justifying why MCPS/Taylor/BOE have MCPS as a Christian based school system.... not surprising given the number of hate crimes that go unaddressed.

New Year’s Day is not a Christian holiday. It may be a day of obligation for Catholics, but that has no bearing on the school calendar. There are plenty of days of obligation where school is still in session. You’re literally only talking about Christmas Eve/Day, which at this point are built into winter break. So are you suggesting that winter break be moved to different weeks to make your point? Good Friday and Easter Monday are days that state law mandates schools are closed, and MCPS is not responsible for that. There are also plenty of Christians that have no issue with that law being changed, but as of now it’s still on the books.

Nobody has suggested this. It's interesting though how triggering it is for some of you to read about the ways in which our calendar is structured around Christian traditions and culture. Why do you continue to claim I think that is a bad thing (given I specifically said it wasn't lol)? It's obviously done for operational reasons and won't change.

This post isn’t responding to you, it’s responding to the poster who specifically said why not use Christmas and New Years as make-up days. Take a deep breath, you are not the main character here.

That PP didn't suggest moving winter break either