How DO we get the calendar changed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For anyone who couldn’t watch:

1. A motion is going to the board for Veterans Day and Indigenous People’s day 2026 to be school days.
2. Strong advocacy for early release to 1. Be moved to Friday and 2. Not be scheduled to occur on any week with a different holiday/second early release.

Some discussions around changing number of snowdays to get a week back and what to do about elections.

So the one-year only early release for elementary is now permanent?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it even possible to have school on Christmas?

It would not be operationally feasible. This should be the only reason to have religious holidays.

And Christmas is not a specific FCPS holiday anyway since Winter Break already covers it.

Wouldn’t you need to pay time and a half on a federal holiday? At least that’s what I get when I have to work federal holidays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone who couldn’t watch:

1. A motion is going to the board for Veterans Day and Indigenous People’s day 2026 to be school days.
2. Strong advocacy for early release to 1. Be moved to Friday and 2. Not be scheduled to occur on any week with a different holiday/second early release.

Some discussions around changing number of snowdays to get a week back and what to do about elections.

So the one-year only early release for elementary is now permanent?

Such a shock right?! I think they’re going to try to blame the CBA now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it even possible to have school on Christmas?

It would not be operationally feasible. This should be the only reason to have religious holidays.

And Christmas is not a specific FCPS holiday anyway since Winter Break already covers it.

Wouldn’t you need to pay time and a half on a federal holiday? At least that’s what I get when I have to work federal holidays.

No. Indigenous Peoples/Columbus is a Federal holiday and teachers work. By policy FCPS should work veterans day as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it even possible to have school on Christmas?

It would not be operationally feasible. This should be the only reason to have religious holidays.

And Christmas is not a specific FCPS holiday anyway since Winter Break already covers it.

Wouldn’t you need to pay time and a half on a federal holiday? At least that’s what I get when I have to work federal holidays.

You don’t “need” to pay time and a half any time. I always worked on MLK, Veterans, and Presidents Days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For anyone who couldn’t watch:

1. A motion is going to the board for Veterans Day and Indigenous People’s day 2026 to be school days.
2. Strong advocacy for early release to 1. Be moved to Friday and 2. Not be scheduled to occur on any week with a different holiday/second early release.

Some discussions around changing number of snowdays to get a week back and what to do about elections.

This is pretty reasonable. They’ll get pushback on Friday early releases because absences will be too high. Also, if they remove 5 snow days, they should have a contingency for canceling early releases, to preserve hours for emergency closures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone who couldn’t watch:

1. A motion is going to the board for Veterans Day and Indigenous People’s day 2026 to be school days.
2. Strong advocacy for early release to 1. Be moved to Friday and 2. Not be scheduled to occur on any week with a different holiday/second early release.

Some discussions around changing number of snowdays to get a week back and what to do about elections.

This is pretty reasonable. They’ll get pushback on Friday early releases because absences will be too high. Also, if they remove 5 snow days, they should have a contingency for canceling early releases, to preserve hours for emergency closures.

This is a smart idea.

The main thing is just to make sure to be in touch with your board member to express the support for the motion to add the two days. It’s not lost on me that the effort is being made to fix one day before election day… but even incremental advances toward reasonable calendars should be applauded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone who couldn’t watch:

1. A motion is going to the board for Veterans Day and Indigenous People’s day 2026 to be school days.
2. Strong advocacy for early release to 1. Be moved to Friday and 2. Not be scheduled to occur on any week with a different holiday/second early release.

Some discussions around changing number of snowdays to get a week back and what to do about elections.

This is pretty reasonable. They’ll get pushback on Friday early releases because absences will be too high. Also, if they remove 5 snow days, they should have a contingency for canceling early releases, to preserve hours for emergency closures.

I think that’s my main sticking point with the calendar this year. We have missed so much time that we need to dump the early releases going forward. But they just won’t do it. Other districts extend the calendar or cut into spring break if there are too many weather days … we don’t even need to do that. We could get time back by just cancelling the early releases for the rest of this school year.

[Anonymous]

This is fd up beyond belief. I’m a democrat ready and willing to vote any way it takes to end this shit for school situation and our taxes aren’t cheap. Just tell me who to vote for or against. I’m done with the dicking around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:With all the early release days my 3rd grader comes home with a significant amount of teaching that was skipped. They didn’t get to it and they move on. Since January numerous concepts are skipped. Meanwhile my K watches movies on early release days. The early release days for weather and 2hrs delays have been very very disruptive. Total hours is meaningless is the quality is poor. Let the kids who celebrate Eid take off as an excused absence what does the entire school need to be off for a holiday most don’t celebrate?🙌

Isn't it the support staff -- bus drivers, cafeteria workers, classroom aids -- who are celebrating Eid and will not be working? That was the claim a few years ago anyway. You can't have school on a day when few bus drivers are available.

There was never any evidence of higher absentee rates for students or staff on the newly added religious holidays. Random other days had higher absentee rates and the school system operated fine.

In other words, there is no operational problem that these religions holidays are solving.

+1
These were the facts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone who couldn’t watch:

1. A motion is going to the board for Veterans Day and Indigenous People’s day 2026 to be school days.
2. Strong advocacy for early release to 1. Be moved to Friday and 2. Not be scheduled to occur on any week with a different holiday/second early release.

Some discussions around changing number of snowdays to get a week back and what to do about elections.

This is pretty reasonable. They’ll get pushback on Friday early releases because absences will be too high. Also, if they remove 5 snow days, they should have a contingency for canceling early releases, to preserve hours for emergency closures.

I think that’s my main sticking point with the calendar this year. We have missed so much time that we need to dump the early releases going forward. But they just won’t do it. Other districts extend the calendar or cut into spring break if there are too many weather days … we don’t even need to do that. We could get time back by just cancelling the early releases for the rest of this school year.

What early releases? I hope this isn't just about ES. The Calendar this year was a disaster for everyone!!!!

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:We don't get off for "every possible holiday." They added only FOUR holidays (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Diwali, and Eid) as days off, in addition to already having a 2-week winter break for Christmas and tying Spring Break to Easter. Stop using holidays as a scapegoat.

I'd love to have fewer weather closures, but the weather and road clearing is not really in the school's control.

Lunar new year.
Eid is like 3 different days.

At the same time they added in all the religious holidays, they also threw in Veteran day and the Wednesday before thanksgiving for good measure because, why not have another sort week in November? One a one off the holidays don't seem bad but collectively they add an extra 1.5 weeks to the school year. No to mention, all the religious observance.

We never used to have these days off. I would love to see the data on how may kids actually missed school on these holidays and if it was really enough to rationalize adding them to the calendar.

The fall is especially disruptive with so many short weeks.

Lunar New Year doesn’t count as a holiday. Sometimes (like this year) it was treated as a TW. In 2028 they will have school on Lunar New Year (https://www.fcps.edu/system/files/forms/2025-02/2027-2028-standard-school-year-calendar.pdf)

They will have early release on LNY in ‘28 to be precise.

Well, yes. It aligns with the end of the quarter.

This is the bare minimum and it’s insulting. And yeah this is a political move to get votes by standing board members who should all go.

It does— and it is another non-full week of school. This is why we need to make some trade-offs instead of simply adding days off/early release and moving further and further into summer.

See, you want a longer summer, but I like having a 4 day weekend in January during a non-peak travel time. The early dismissal allows us to fly out or drive to our destination on Wednesday. I would prefer the 2027-28 calendar as is over hoarding days off for the summer.

That’s why there will never be a calendar that makes everyone happy. Even a compromise will leave people disappointed.

Exactly this. None of these complaints are academically data driven. They’re all about personal preference. FCPS cares about academics, plain and simple.

Find the group you align with, band together, and complain to whoever you please. However, there’s hundreds of thousands of parents and most simply do not care enough to complain. The vocal minority is just, loud.

Academically there's no reason to have so many disjointed days off.

I have not met a single parent who is happy with the calendar. You're right that most people aren't extremely vocal, but none are happy. Nearly everyone is very unhappy with it. Just Americans are a passive bunch and we aren't going to protest and riot.

“None are happy”

“Nearly everyone is very unhappy”

These statements are literally the definition of an anecdotal fallacy. You can’t speak for hundreds of thousands of people. There are literally posters on this thread who have no problem with it. Yes, you and your circle and the people you have talked to dislike it, but you truly have no idea what percentage or amount of people hate it vs love it.

The board said in September they had an unprecedented number of complaints about the calendar, and that was before the snow days. Thats pretty reliable data.

I dislike the 2025-26 calendar, specifically. The 2024-25 calendar was fine. The 2026-27 calendar is fine. The 2027-28 calendar is fine.

With all due respect, this is the problem. The issue is not whether specific calendar is lucky enough to have religious holidays fall on weekends, or spring break/Easter alignment to be reasonable or whatever. That's pure luck - other years will be as dismal as this year.

Issue is more the ridiculous "Guiding Principles" FCPS uses in setting the calendar to begin with - need to recognize every religious holiday regardless of how many folks observe, endless training/planning days etc. Other poster in their SB letter said it well: calendar is already borderline unreasonable under perfect weather/contingency conditions. But throw in inevitable snow days, mythical tornado days, early release Wed etc. - and it's brutal if your goal is actually to educate.

I don’t disagree. I just don’t see the point of tinkering with the 26-27 and 27-28 school calendars as Meren has stated she’d like to do. The worst thing they could do is drag their feet on approving calendars because they want to revamp the process.

People were freaking out about the delay in releasing the 23-24 calendar, and that was approved in February 2023. We’re halfway through March. I would find it incredibly frustrating if they started making changes to what’s been published.

Now, if they put guidelines around early release Wednesdays (which haven’t been announced for 2026-27) then I’d be all for that.

This is probably the bare minimum to be seen as taking the calendar issue seriously. Next low hanging fruit is Veterans Day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone who couldn’t watch:

1. A motion is going to the board for Veterans Day and Indigenous People’s day 2026 to be school days.
2. Strong advocacy for early release to 1. Be moved to Friday and 2. Not be scheduled to occur on any week with a different holiday/second early release.

Some discussions around changing number of snowdays to get a week back and what to do about elections.

This is pretty reasonable. They’ll get pushback on Friday early releases because absences will be too high. Also, if they remove 5 snow days, they should have a contingency for canceling early releases, to preserve hours for emergency closures.

I think that’s my main sticking point with the calendar this year. We have missed so much time that we need to dump the early releases going forward. But they just won’t do it. Other districts extend the calendar or cut into spring break if there are too many weather days … we don’t even need to do that. We could get time back by just cancelling the early releases for the rest of this school year.

This bothers me too. The hours are set aside to cover for operational emergencies. It’s not a piggy bank to fund passion projects. If elementary teachers need more hours, I support them, but our teachers have sounded pretty defeated on correspondence regarding early release dates. They probably spend an hour those weeks verifying every student’s dismissal plan for the week.

[Anonymous]

This is what DEI and equity hath wrought. Everyone gets a holiday, risk aversion etc. it’s why schools were closed here for 1.5 years, even after the fact knowing that vaccines and masks didn’t stop the spread-the the county insisted-at the detriment of the children. It’s why enrollment continues to drop.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to write your school board members and then you need to engage them where they care which is politics.

All of the schoolboard members are liberal and many are progressive. This calendar is *not* progressive and disproportionately impacts lower-income and dual-working families. Women and hourly workers are supposed to be constituencies democrats care about. So raise the issue with local league of women voters, canvassers/fundraisers who are trying to get support for other democratic candidates (especially if you’ve donated before) and directly ask school board members how they are contributing to the affordability agenda with their calendar choices.

It is idiotic that this is how any of this works. But COVID created the idea for many Democrats that liberals don’t mind keeping kids out of school and now its course correction.

It’s because elite white rich Karen’s virtue signal…