The school year is more than 10 months for staff and 2025-26 is extra long for students-Must be shortened

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the 2025-2026 calendar will be changed.

They are not going to shorten the school year. They would need to remove either the federal holidays or the new religious days or shorten the Winter Break and I don't see them doing any of that. The only one I potentially see them doing is removing the federal holidays. Losing the new religious holidays will cause a stink with the various religions and shortening winter break will piss off the people who take a month at that time of year to travel to Asia/SE Asia visit family and the parents who want two weeks in Europe or skiing.

If religious holiday must be kept as days off for all students, then schedule Teacher work days (professional development or planning days) on religious holidays and allow specific teachers to take off religious holiday on Teacher workdays if relevant to their religion.

-Teacher

Teacher here. I agree.

I do too except I think everyone should get 1-2 floating holidays for this purpose

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I prefer the longer school year.

FCPS teacher here. I prefer the longer school year as well. We don't need more weeks off in the summer. (Actually, I'd really prefer a year round schedule with 9 weeks on and 3 weeks off.)

You’re in the minority.

I don’t know, this came up in our high school work room today—we all agreed it would be nice to have 9 weeks on, 3 weeks off, with a work day at the end of each quarter for grades and the few other major holidays that would have attendance impacts (thanksgiving). Summer could be 4 or 5 weeks—that’s enough.

The only voice of dissent was from someone who just inherited a beach house and is excited to spend long summers in it going forward, lol

How would kids take "summer classes" either to catch up or get ahead?

For the standard 9 week on, 3 week off plan, the summer is usually a 5 to 5.5 week break. That is enough time for the 4 week summer school classes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I prefer the longer school year.

FCPS teacher here. I prefer the longer school year as well. We don't need more weeks off in the summer. (Actually, I'd really prefer a year round schedule with 9 weeks on and 3 weeks off.)

You’re in the minority.

I don’t know, this came up in our high school work room today—we all agreed it would be nice to have 9 weeks on, 3 weeks off, with a work day at the end of each quarter for grades and the few other major holidays that would have attendance impacts (thanksgiving). Summer could be 4 or 5 weeks—that’s enough.

The only voice of dissent was from someone who just inherited a beach house and is excited to spend long summers in it going forward, lol

How would kids take "summer classes" either to catch up or get ahead?

I think it could actually be better for the “catch up” kids. We could focus on catching up 1/4 of material at a time instead of a whole year. Maybe if we gave them intensive first quarter support, they’d be capable of passing 2nd or 3rd quarter.

For the get ahead kids, aren’t summer courses usually 5 weeks? That would still work.

I’m not sure we should be making schedules for the 5% of kids who take summer classes to get ahead anyway though. It’s a “nice to have”, not a requirement. Things like PE or personal finance that kids do over the summer could also be done during the school year as an extra online class if really desired.

[Anonymous]

I prefer 6-8 week summer break and two week breaks between each quarter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I prefer 6-8 week summer break and two week breaks between each quarter.

Sounds fabulous to me!

[Anonymous]

It's hilarious how every June people can't wait for the year to end but in this thread most responses support endless year round school!

The normal people (anti-year round schoolers) need to make sure next school year ends no later than June 10, 2026 at the worst better yet June 5, 2026. FCCPS is August 18-June 5afterall so it's certainly possible but starting so early and still going so deep in June is unacceptable!

[Anonymous]

There is no point in having school after students take the SOL. If you pass the SOL your Summer should start. If you fail, four more weeks of school and retake the test. Schools could save money by only retaining the teacher they need to teach the retake students. Everyone else, loses pay for working fewer days but gets a longer Summer break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no point in having school after students take the SOL. If you pass the SOL your Summer should start. If you fail, four more weeks of school and retake the test. Schools could save money by only retaining the teacher they need to teach the retake students. Everyone else, loses pay for working fewer days but gets a longer Summer break.

As a teacher I love that idea

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's hilarious how every June people can't wait for the year to end but in this thread most responses support endless year round school!

The normal people (anti-year round schoolers) need to make sure next school year ends no later than June 10, 2026 at the worst better yet June 5, 2026. FCCPS is August 18-June 5afterall so it's certainly possible but starting so early and still going so deep in June is unacceptable!

It isn't endless year round school. We get 180 school days -- I would just prefer them to be spread out on the 9 week on, 2 week off schedule with 2 days off over Labor Day, 3 days off at Thanksgiving, and a 7 week summer. I'm a HS teacher, and I'm realistic about this schedule never being approved. But one can dream...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is no point in having school after students take the SOL. If you pass the SOL your Summer should start. If you fail, four more weeks of school and retake the test. Schools could save money by only retaining the teacher they need to teach the retake students. Everyone else, loses pay for working fewer days but gets a longer Summer break.

We already have this at the high school. It's called summer school. Kids get 3 chances to pass the SOL: May, June, and July. Those who pass in May or June don't go in July. We used to have it in elementary too--summer school for kids who needed the extra days. Too bad it's cut from the budget this year.

But no, you will never get staff to take paycuts. (The FCPS facebook page has multiple posts about how teachers are going to make up the lost summer school pay since it's not happening in elementary this year) Goodbye to ever fully staffing an FCPS school again if PW and Loudoun and Alexandria are paying full contracts and FCPS is only paying 90%. I can't imagine many parents liking it either. School is free childcare--most kids are in camps all summer, so if they don't have school for 4 weeks that's ~$1500/kid families have to find.

The real issue is that no one is providing teachers with standards or curriculum for after the SOL, so it's up to tired, burnt out teachers to create engaging lessons from scratch on...who knows what. It would be AWESOME if central office gave us a list of standards to teach after the SOL, and gave us support (project ideas, resources, materials) to do so. But they never will.

[Anonymous]

Waah waah waah lazy entitled teachers don't want to do their jobs, what else is new.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's hilarious how every June people can't wait for the year to end but in this thread most responses support endless year round school!

The normal people (anti-year round schoolers) need to make sure next school year ends no later than June 10, 2026 at the worst better yet June 5, 2026. FCCPS is August 18-June 5afterall so it's certainly possible but starting so early and still going so deep in June is unacceptable!

It isn't endless year round school. We get 180 school days -- I would just prefer them to be spread out on the 9 week on, 2 week off schedule with 2 days off over Labor Day, 3 days off at Thanksgiving, and a 7 week summer. I'm a HS teacher, and I'm realistic about this schedule never being approved. But one can dream...

Having school in late June, July and/or most of August would be punishment! It is TOO HOT for school! Summer is time for camp and vacations and other summer opportunities. I do agree that there should be an extra vacation in the school year since January to April is TOO LONG but some of these PD/TW and single day holidays need to be removed to add a break and still not end later. It's only 180 school days if none are canceled (which beats Maryland and some other states) but some of the single day holidays are not necessary.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no point in having school after students take the SOL. If you pass the SOL your Summer should start. If you fail, four more weeks of school and retake the test. Schools could save money by only retaining the teacher they need to teach the retake students. Everyone else, loses pay for working fewer days but gets a longer Summer break.

As a teacher I love that idea

That could be a loss of more than a month of pay depending on your subject and test date.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You're absolutely right, we should reduce winter break by one week and have a shorter spring break, children do not need "good friday" or whatever it's called off, nobody even knows what that is. So dumb to have holidays related to religions. Especially when in 50 years that religion won't even be the majority in this country anymore, thank goodness.

Remove all the religious holidays from the calendar. Public schools should not celebrate religious holidays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is no point in having school after students take the SOL. If you pass the SOL your Summer should start. If you fail, four more weeks of school and retake the test. Schools could save money by only retaining the teacher they need to teach the retake students. Everyone else, loses pay for working fewer days but gets a longer Summer break.

As a teacher I love that idea

That could be a loss of more than a month of pay depending on your subject and test date.

I'd like that option. For every teacher working a second job there is usually one who is the secondary income in their home and/or is balancing child/eldercare and could use the time more than the money.