DCPS last full week of school was 6 weeks ago
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Anonymous
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The last full week of school at DCPS was December 16-20.
And next full week of school is February 3-7, due to the snow week during Jan 6-10. So that means it will be 7 weeks between full weeks of school - this is insane. And then after that....two more partial weeks! Why are we straddling holidays and PD days on separate weeks? Maybe we should combine them into the same week so we can minimize all these partial weeks and potential learning loss. I commented on the DCPS calendar study, but it seems like this is an area where DCPS should focus minimizing disruptions to school. We literally have a no-school day in 8 out of 10 weeks from late December into mid February. Why? Just get out of school earlier and consolidate all these days off. |
Anonymous
| Agreed! |
Anonymous
Yeah, its dumb. I have one in DCPS and one in a charter this year, and the charter schedule has far more full weeks. And then more full weeks off. Everything is more consolidated. Far prefer the charter schedule. |
Anonymous
| I agree with everything in your post. They should have taken the pd day last Friday and pd day in February and done those on January 2 and 3. Give kids two full weeks for winter break and then had more five days week of school. |
Anonymous
| They won’t combine the PD with holiday weekends / other days off because too many staff members will take leave or call in sick to extend their holidays. |
Anonymous
| Agree 100%. These serial partial weeks are ridiculous. |
Anonymous
Well then they should get fired. They already combined the PD with MLK and Presidents weekends. Just put the PD on a Tuesday instead of a Friday so there's a full week of school instead of two 4-day weeks. There's nothing stopping the staff calling out sick on the Thursday to extend their holiday (PD Friday and holiday on Monday). In fact, they are probably more likely to do that since traveling on a Thursday is cheaper than a Friday on a holiday weekend. |
Anonymous
The calendar proposal for 26-29 indicated they they would move toward this. The 2025-2026 calendar already has it: https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/SY%2025-26%20Calendar%20Final_03202024_English.pdf |
Anonymous
| They made the calendar this way because they took away February break. They explicitly stated they were adding more 3 and 4 day weekends instead of the week in February. |
Anonymous
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Three givens in life: Death, taxes and someone whining here about the DCPS calendar (no matter how much DCPS fiddles with it).
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Anonymous
| This coming Monday is off because it aligns with the end of the term. Teachers always get the day after the end of the term for data entry and grading. Why they needed the PD last week instead of just the 3 day weekend for MLK I don’t know. |
Anonymous
What is the reason for sprinkling PD days throughout the year anyway? Is there any reason they can't just do a week of PD at the beginning or end of the year and reduce the number of random days off during the year? Is there even a reason for this number of PD days? It doesn't sound like teachers get a whole lot out of these days, based on conversations with them. It sounds like they are mostly meaningless trainings done via Zoom. I understand giving teachers non-instructional days so they can submit grades and end of term paperwork. That makes sense. I don't get needing to keep kids out of school every other week so teachers can do Zoom trainings they don't get anything out of. |
Anonymous
| It's particularly crazy because the last full week of school was right before the holiday break so was not really a full week of actual learning at any elementary school I'm aware of. |
Anonymous
Exactly. |
Anonymous
| The 2 snow days and days and days of indoor recess has not helped/made this more noticeable |