Regular Half days
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Anonymous
| How many schools have regular half days? I understand that our charter is switching to regular weekly half days, and so we will either switch to our local dcps or another charter school. I understand dci has half day Fridays (but those kids can make it home by themselves) and mundo verde has regular half days each week. Are there other schools who do this (so that I can avoid them?). Thanks! |
Anonymous
| ITDS has them basically every other week. It's really irritating and it makes the school year longer, which cuts into summer fun. |
Anonymous
How does it make the year longer? We still have 183 days, with snow days built in. The half days count as days. Confused by what you mean. |
Anonymous
| Cap City does early release on Wed at 1 |
Anonymous
| Breakthrough has half days I know. I think it's pretty wild personally that charters are allowed weekly half days personally. |
Anonymous
So wild to give teachers actual planning and development time! |
Anonymous
| How do half days help kids? Asking sincerely. |
Anonymous
And how does DCPS manage? Are the professional days enough? It’s such absolute nonsense that teachers need this planning time. Half days are just a convenient way to ensure poor kids can’t attend a school where someone needs to pick up a kid in th middle of the day. |
Anonymous
There's a requirement of total hours as well as days. |
Anonymous
If you compare DCPS and ITDS calendars you'll see that the start and end dates are different, summer is shorter. Some people like this, of course. ITDS has a lot of half days, PD days, and longer breaks. They constantly talk about teacher burnout, even though they have a zillion aides-- way more than DCPS does-- and somehow having a shorter summer break isn't a problem for burnout. I dunno. It's kind of a groupthink within their administration. |
Anonymous
Wednesday is insane. Parents have a full day of work! Wednesdays are typically mandatory in-office days. WTF. How do you all cope? |
Anonymous
DCPS has plenty of paid development days and their teachers have less turnover. |
Anonymous
| I know some of the elementary charters like Breakthrough do have organized options for kids to cover the delta for early release days. It is an additional cost depending on the program you select, although it is also fully covered for students eligible for financial support. I think understanding the details of these types of arrangements would require you to talk to the school or families there, the school website won't give you the whole picture of what might be available. |
Anonymous
With aftercare, obviously. But I think a lot of schools do run on the assumption that at least one parent is SAH or has a lot of flexibility. |
Anonymous
| DCB has half day Fridays. It’s honestly fine. The school day M-Th is a little longer than the DCPS day, which has some advantages. On Fridays after card is available and there’s no cap at DCB, ie there are spots for all. And it can useful for kids to have a half day on a Friday if you are traveling |