How to fit school days into Gov Larry Hogan's ridiculous policy on school start and stop dates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Normally the BOE sends out a notice once the calendar is set. They have never before sent out an email like this. I want an email saying what the final calendar is and that’s it.

They didn’t even send out an email to all parents when there was an incident where guns were brought to a school. They did not send out a universal email when the RM Security Team Leader was found to have been having a sexual relationship with a student. Why did the BOE choose to send out this particular email? Maybe it’s just random but it does seem slightly political to me. But maybe I’m wrong. They’ve also been known to make these calendar issue a political issue in the past. They sent Hogan several letters last year about the calendar, etc.

Why is it "a political issue" when a local board of education sends the governor a letter about a matter directly related to the governor's regulation of the local board of education's responsibilities?

Also, unlike when a student brings guns to a school, or when a security team leader at a high school has a sexual relationship with a student, the calendar affects everybody in MCPS. So it makes sense not to send out an e-mail to all parents for the former, but to send out an e-mail to all parents for the latter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because school really is a daycare that trains students for future factory work and not a place of learning.

Ironically MCPS does need to get back to their roots of shop and get the kids that will obviously never go to college, interested in a trade so they can support themselves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Because school really is a daycare that trains students for future factory work and not a place of learning.

You haven't been in a factory in the US lately, have you? They're not what they used to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think 8 weeks of summer break are more than enough. We take 2 weeks vacation and six weeks of camp. My kids get sick of camp and look forward to getting back to school. Hogan is nuts! We vacationed at Cape Cod this year to protest Hogan’s mandate. No way am I giving Ocean City money for this idiocy.

Wait. So you’re pissed at Hogan. And you decided to take it out on small business owners in Ocean City. Okay, then. Kudos to you for sticking it to the Republicans.

LOL

Well at least the PP supported the small businesses on Cape Cod, plus the extra gas it took to drive up and back to Cape Cod (versus OC).

The extra gas usage supports the oil industry. And it’s possible that some of the hotels and restaurants on Cape Cof are owned by Republican supporters.

Honestly, I don’t care where PP vacations, but I find the stance a little odd. Do you really make decisions to ‘protest Hogan’s mandate’?? Seems like a silly thing to protest, but you do you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Normally the BOE sends out a notice once the calendar is set. They have never before sent out an email like this. I want an email saying what the final calendar is and that’s it.

They didn’t even send out an email to all parents when there was an incident where guns were brought to a school. They did not send out a universal email when the RM Security Team Leader was found to have been having a sexual relationship with a student. Why did the BOE choose to send out this particular email? Maybe it’s just random but it does seem slightly political to me. But maybe I’m wrong. They’ve also been known to make these calendar issue a political issue in the past. They sent Hogan several letters last year about the calendar, etc.

Why is it "a political issue" when a local board of education sends the governor a letter about a matter directly related to the governor's regulation of the local board of education's responsibilities?

Also, unlike when a student brings guns to a school, or when a security team leader at a high school has a sexual relationship with a student, the calendar affects everybody in MCPS. So it makes sense not to send out an e-mail to all parents for the former, but to send out an e-mail to all parents for the latter.

Okay, maybe you’re right. I’ll give the BOE the benefit of the doubt.

Though I do strongly believe that student safety should be MCPS’ Number 1 priority and personally, I’d prefer they focus their energies on doing a better job with that. That is way more important to me than what Day school starts/ends.

It’s been pretty clear over the past two years that MCPS has issues with keeping kids safe - the sexual predator issues, weapons at school, that poor girl in Gaithersburg who didn’t get access to her inhaler, the incident (possible rape) at Rockville HS. And we haven’t received as many emails about what MCPS is doing to ensure kids’ safety at school.

Somewhat OT, but just IMHO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's political because the Board of Ed sends out info to inform their constituency about a change that will affect them/the school calendar? Get a grip! If they sent nothing and just made the change you'd consider them corrupt for not making the process public.

What exactly would you preferred they have done, given that the calendar will change considerably next year?

I would also like people to answer that question. Would you have preferred for the Board of Education to not inform you about the calendar?

+1 There are multiple calendars under consideration, and MCPS gave you a chance to weigh in and comment. This is a step forward.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Normally the BOE sends out a notice once the calendar is set. They have never before sent out an email like this. I want an email saying what the final calendar is and that’s it.

They didn’t even send out an email to all parents when there was an incident where guns were brought to a school. They did not send out a universal email when the RM Security Team Leader was found to have been having a sexual relationship with a student. Why did the BOE choose to send out this particular email? Maybe it’s just random but it does seem slightly political to me. But maybe I’m wrong. They’ve also been known to make these calendar issue a political issue in the past. They sent Hogan several letters last year about the calendar, etc.

Why is it "a political issue" when a local board of education sends the governor a letter about a matter directly related to the governor's regulation of the local board of education's responsibilities?

Also, unlike when a student brings guns to a school, or when a security team leader at a high school has a sexual relationship with a student, the calendar affects everybody in MCPS. So it makes sense not to send out an e-mail to all parents for the former, but to send out an e-mail to all parents for the latter.

Okay, maybe you’re right. I’ll give the BOE the benefit of the doubt.

Though I do strongly believe that student safety should be MCPS’ Number 1 priority and personally, I’d prefer they focus their energies on doing a better job with that. That is way more important to me than what Day school starts/ends.

It’s been pretty clear over the past two years that MCPS has issues with keeping kids safe - the sexual predator issues, weapons at school, that poor girl in Gaithersburg who didn’t get access to her inhaler, the incident (possible rape) at Rockville HS. And we haven’t received as many emails about what MCPS is doing to ensure kids’ safety at school.

Somewhat OT, but just IMHO.

Here is mcps' interim safety report that my kids' schools emailed out last week.
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/uploadedFiles/departments/security-new/0204.18_MCPS%20InternalReview.pdf

While mcps should be focused on student safety, the school board MUST create a school schedule for the upcoming year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's political because the Board of Ed sends out info to inform their constituency about a change that will affect them/the school calendar? Get a grip! If they sent nothing and just made the change you'd consider them corrupt for not making the process public.

What exactly would you preferred they have done, given that the calendar will change considerably next year?

I would also like people to answer that question. Would you have preferred for the Board of Education to not inform you about the calendar?

+1 There are multiple calendars under consideration, and MCPS gave you a chance to weigh in and comment. This is a step forward.

Since when has the BOE ever cared what the public thinks in regard to the calendar? I have lived her all my life. They moved it back to August without opinion. They added Eid without public opinion. They make the calendar every year without opinion. You are fooling yourself if you think they are actually are looking for public input to make a decision. If not, why not send it out to an actual vote instead of a random email? Put it on the Nov elections if needed. Because hands down the Spring Break off and religious holidays back in school would win out because it is such a small minority that celebrate. BUT... the BOE also knows it would be a media shit storm and they would have all the minority religious leaders in their meetings from here until the end of the year.

This is a ploy to show the state they are just "frazzled" to get all of their days in. A way for people to complain to the state by saying it can only be minority holidays or Spring Break, we just can't figure another way because Hogan is so mean (even though this was O'Malley who moved this forward.) No other school districts sent out these letters because they can figure it out.

How about taking away President's Day for a possible snow day if needed, like other counties including PG and HC. How about writing to the state to ask if they can use Easter Monday as a potential make-up days. Or running school until June 14th and putting back in whole day teacher days. Having June 15 as a possible snow day, President's Day, and the 3rd quarter professional day moved back to half day if needed. I mean this is not rocket science. The options the BOE put out are either religious holidays OR Spring Break. You can do this and still offer both but they rather getting everyone up in arms instead. It is really pathetic how many people fall for it instead of looking at other county calendars and seeing how it is possible, write a letter to the BOE and say "DO YOUR JOBS AND GET IT DONE!!"

[Anonymous]

Hey, PP, it sounds like you have lots of ideas about the calendar. Have you provided your input to the BoE?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers do not get paid in summer in MoCo

Teachers DO work more than 8 hours a day / every day

If parking lots are empty on teacher work days, that is because the union negotiated that teachers be able to work from home on those days- not because they are not working

Having all teacher planning and professional development occur in summer would be ineffective. You can't anticipate in August the changes you need to make to your lesson plans in February... planning time, collaboration with colleagues, using data from current students to drive the next unit- teachers need time periodically to reflect and plan.

School is not daycare

Teachers have the week between Christmas and New Years and the week of Spring break to have professional in service days in addition to summer. There are 261 non-weekend days in a year. Most of us get 10 federal holidays a year and do not get a week off at Christmas and a week off in March. Accounting for the 9 federal holidays (July 4 is not in teh school year), that leaves 252 weekdays a year. Take off 180 days for school and there are still 71 week days. The teachers can have their professional days on those 71 week days. That's typically 5 days at Christmas, 5 days for Spring break and 61 days spread across the summer. They need to handle their in-service days on those days. And if the issue is the pay, then the union needs to negotiate an appropriate payment level to compensate the teachers. However, that is a discussion outside the scheduling of the school year. There are 185 days between 4 Sep 2018 and 14 Jun 2019 that are not any of the federal holidays, the week between Christmas and New Year and one week for spring break. There should not be a problem fitting in 180 days of school. There's even some leeway if you need snow days (up to 5).

False, according to the following MCPS e-mail snippet:

Next year, we will have even fewer days to work with than in years past to accommodate our instructional traditions, such as having 184 instructional days, and our non-instructional traditions, such as a full week for Spring Break. As we design next year’s calendar, we start with several requirements from the State:

September 4–June 14: the permissible time frame for instruction
180: the minimum number of instructional days required
15: the number of State mandated days that schools must be closed
3: the number of snow make-up days required at the end of the year (before June 14)

Once the calendar accounts for these State required elements, a total of six days remain that can be programmed for other, non-required educational or operational priorities, such as Spring Break or instructional days above the state minimum of 180. How to allocate these days among our multiple calendar priorities is our challenge.

QED. You have been defeated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's political because the Board of Ed sends out info to inform their constituency about a change that will affect them/the school calendar? Get a grip! If they sent nothing and just made the change you'd consider them corrupt for not making the process public.

What exactly would you preferred they have done, given that the calendar will change considerably next year?

I would also like people to answer that question. Would you have preferred for the Board of Education to not inform you about the calendar?

+1 There are multiple calendars under consideration, and MCPS gave you a chance to weigh in and comment. This is a step forward.

Since when has the BOE ever cared what the public thinks in regard to the calendar? I have lived her all my life. They moved it back to August without opinion. They added Eid without public opinion. They make the calendar every year without opinion. You are fooling yourself if you think they are actually are looking for public input to make a decision. If not, why not send it out to an actual vote instead of a random email? Put it on the Nov elections if needed. Because hands down the Spring Break off and religious holidays back in school would win out because it is such a small minority that celebrate. BUT... the BOE also knows it would be a media shit storm and they would have all the minority religious leaders in their meetings from here until the end of the year.

This is a ploy to show the state they are just "frazzled" to get all of their days in. A way for people to complain to the state by saying it can only be minority holidays or Spring Break, we just can't figure another way because Hogan is so mean (even though this was O'Malley who moved this forward.) No other school districts sent out these letters because they can figure it out.

How about taking away President's Day for a possible snow day if needed, like other counties including PG and HC. How about writing to the state to ask if they can use Easter Monday as a potential make-up days. Or running school until June 14th and putting back in whole day teacher days. Having June 15 as a possible snow day, President's Day, and the 3rd quarter professional day moved back to half day if needed. I mean this is not rocket science. The options the BOE put out are either religious holidays OR Spring Break. You can do this and still offer both but they rather getting everyone up in arms instead. It is really pathetic how many people fall for it instead of looking at other county calendars and seeing how it is possible, write a letter to the BOE and say "DO YOUR JOBS AND GET IT DONE!!"

DP
This is exactly how I feel.

And to answer the other PP, it’s basically what I wrote in their comment box, I don’t care what they do, I just want the BOE to make a decision and get it done. Get the calendar out with plenty of notice so that people can plan.

[Anonymous]

So, what I am hearing is that parents who want(less summer and other breaks and days off) more school days are the ones who want school to be a daycare/nanny/baby sitter so that they don't have additional summer camp and babysitting expenses. That is not what school is for. If you ever take a sick day, or new fad today a "mental health" day off, don't you think you should have the same compassion for your own children? School is not a kennel to drop the kid off when it suits you.

[Anonymous]

Doesn't seem that crazy. In NY, we started school the Wednesday after labor day and then finished in late June (22 or 23 ish) and that included a week off in February for 'mid-winter recess'. Since they don't have that down here, it doesn't seem crazy.

[Anonymous]

I tend to think this was a political tantrum on behalf of the board of education but I can't remember if they sent out emails for other calendar changes. From what I read here they haven't but I also never received an email about this. I grew up in Macgomery County and I always started school after Labor Day so I'm glad to be getting back to that. However, I do not remember if it ended by a certain day in June. I want to conserve winter break and I want to conserve spring break. I'm not sure what the difference between 20 years ago and today's calendar is. I'm also not sure why they're not just going to stick with this year calendar for next year since this one seems to be working OK.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Doesn't seem that crazy. In NY, we started school the Wednesday after labor day and then finished in late June (22 or 23 ish) and that included a week off in February for 'mid-winter recess'. Since they don't have that down here, it doesn't seem crazy.

Also the case where I went to school in NJ. They were still able to fit in the -80 Days.