2023-24 draft calendar scenarios to be reviewed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Longer and frequent breaks is far better.

Kids get time.
Families can travel.

+1

It makes no sense to cram all vacations and breaks in 2-3 months. It's far better to spread it out. International families can travel and kids can get break.

Agree so much. I do appreciate that many have already planned their vacation for late August next year.... but I hope that if this is a reason to keep the later start for the coming year, we can take the time to address it sooner for future years.

How many people in MoCo actually have a "bought and paid for" vacation already for August 2023? I am guessing that is a small fraction of families.

I think you’d be surprised, plus camp schedules are already coming out. Our own extended family is waiting on us/this info for a group trip. People need to be able to plan. This is really late to be changing the weeks in any significant fashion.

Agree. This doesn’t just affect vacations but camps would have to shift schedules too. But yeah, lots of people take august vacations, including teachers. Our next door neighbor is a teacher and their kids are on swim team, so august is the only time that works (obviously not the week before school starts, but often the week before that).

Not to say none of this could shift, I just wouldn’t do it next year unless there was a really compelling reason. Give everyone a heads up for 2024.

+1. Also, nowhere in this state opens as early as August 14. Places that open in mid or early August in other regions end around Memorial Day or the week after. We are still ending mid June in 2023, so I think the shift earlier needs to be done incrementally, although for the record, I absolutely do not think kids should go back to school mid August at all. They are really trying to suck the joy of childhood in MCPS. This is just another example.

Agreed. And I don’t think it makes sense to be potentially two weeks off from what other DMV area districts are doing either.

Frederick County's current school year runs August 17th to June 1st.

While that is indeed true, every single one of the other school systems in the state of Maryland started on or after August 24, with the VAST majority starting on/around August 29 and a significant number starting in September. Aug 17 in Frederick County is a single outlier in this state if you are benchmarking against other school systems, and August 17 is a midweek (Wednesday) start in 2022-23. MCPS starting on August 14 would make us the absolute earliest and an absolute outlier.

No wonder our kids lag behind the rest of the kids in the world. Parents here are not invested in their kid’s education. They can’t understand that summer loss is real. Longer break is not helpful especially for minority kids in low performing school. Its better to start early and have a longer winter or spring break. But no dcum parents care about camps and vacations way more than their kid’s education.

I have the same preference as you but I have no idea why you are latching onto PP’s comment as evidence that “parents here are not invested in their kid’s education.”

Also didn’t all the options have pretty much the same length of summer anyway? A week long thanksgiving break is only two extra days during the year. A two week winter break would probably be 3 extra days. It’s just not that meaningful.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe D was the most popular option. WTF would people be okay with going to June 18th? Maybe a lot of the people who chose D don’t send their kids the last few days of school anyway?

I don’t get why this is such a big deal? Does everyone have plans mid-June?

They probably want to get a jump start on their European vacation.

[Anonymous]

For all of you moaning about learning loss, I'm looking at other counties and they start later than MoCo AND get out earlier. Garrett- Start: Sept. 6 End: June 7 Harford: Sept 6-June 13 Queen Anne's August 29-June 8..Somerset August 29-June 8th, Wicomico- Sept 6-June 14, Worcester: September 6-June 13....so they have the right idea of what a school year should look like. MoCo insists on extra days where no work is actually done because students are more than checked out at that point. Common sense, which not a shocker, but MoCo residents tend not to have.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe D was the most popular option. WTF would people be okay with going to June 18th? Maybe a lot of the people who chose D don’t send their kids the last few days of school anyway?

My kid goes to school every day unless she's sick, but D fits our typical vacation schedule better. I'm not sure why that would be hard to understand. A June 18th end date is no later than an August 17 start is early.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe D was the most popular option. WTF would people be okay with going to June 18th? Maybe a lot of the people who chose D don’t send their kids the last few days of school anyway?

We end this year on June 16. It’s essentially the same/mid June. It’s not freakishly late. I would prefer they strike out a few professional days so they could wrap it up the prior Friday, but no one gave us that option (basic what we have now). I greatly prefer the Aug 28 start, so D was the obvious winner for me. And evidently for the most others.

I think the final version could still end up being something like Aug 28 - June 14, even though that wasn't one of the scenarios.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I can’t believe D was the most popular option. WTF would people be okay with going to June 18th? Maybe a lot of the people who chose D don’t send their kids the last few days of school anyway?

We end this year on June 16. It’s essentially the same/mid June. It’s not freakishly late. I would prefer they strike out a few professional days so they could wrap it up the prior Friday, but no one gave us that option (basic what we have now). I greatly prefer the Aug 28 start, so D was the obvious winner for me. And evidently for the most others.

I think the final version could still end up being something like Aug 28 - June 14, even though that wasn't one of the scenarios.

I agree. Fingers crossed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For all of you moaning about learning loss, I'm looking at other counties and they start later than MoCo AND get out earlier. Garrett- Start: Sept. 6 End: June 7 Harford: Sept 6-June 13 Queen Anne's August 29-June 8..Somerset August 29-June 8th, Wicomico- Sept 6-June 14, Worcester: September 6-June 13....so they have the right idea of what a school year should look like. MoCo insists on extra days where no work is actually done because students are more than checked out at that point. Common sense, which not a shocker, but MoCo residents tend not to have.

Some of them have basically a long weekend for Spring Break and don’t take into consideration any other non-Christian holidays because they have a much less diverse population of students and staff. They also don’t have many teacher workdays so I don’t know how teachers are getting trained or getting time for planning/grading.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Another thing parents don’t seem to get is that more doesn’t always equal better. At the end of the year, students are burned out. 5 extra days isn’t going to do much if they aren’t focused and don’t want to be there. Really putting those phds to good use.

With parents like you, we can see why a child would have a bad attitude toward school. Somehow kids have survived this schedule for decades and even longer years around the world.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Longer and frequent breaks is far better.

Kids get time.
Families can travel.

+1

It makes no sense to cram all vacations and breaks in 2-3 months. It's far better to spread it out. International families can travel and kids can get break.

Agree so much. I do appreciate that many have already planned their vacation for late August next year.... but I hope that if this is a reason to keep the later start for the coming year, we can take the time to address it sooner for future years.

How many people in MoCo actually have a "bought and paid for" vacation already for August 2023? I am guessing that is a small fraction of families.

I think you’d be surprised, plus camp schedules are already coming out. Our own extended family is waiting on us/this info for a group trip. People need to be able to plan. This is really late to be changing the weeks in any significant fashion.

So you don't have paid for vacations already...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Another thing parents don’t seem to get is that more doesn’t always equal better. At the end of the year, students are burned out. 5 extra days isn’t going to do much if they aren’t focused and don’t want to be there. Really putting those phds to good use.

With parents like you, we can see why a child would have a bad attitude toward school. Somehow kids have survived this schedule for decades and even longer years around the world.

My kid has straight As and adores school, but thanks for playing.

Schools and counties all over the country do just fine on 180 days. It's hilarious you think 5 days at the end of June will recoup learning loss, but you just seem overly defensive and not capable of critical thinking.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For all of you moaning about learning loss, I'm looking at other counties and they start later than MoCo AND get out earlier. Garrett- Start: Sept. 6 End: June 7 Harford: Sept 6-June 13 Queen Anne's August 29-June 8..Somerset August 29-June 8th, Wicomico- Sept 6-June 14, Worcester: September 6-June 13....so they have the right idea of what a school year should look like. MoCo insists on extra days where no work is actually done because students are more than checked out at that point. Common sense, which not a shocker, but MoCo residents tend not to have.

Some of them have basically a long weekend for Spring Break and don’t take into consideration any other non-Christian holidays because they have a much less diverse population of students and staff. They also don’t have many teacher workdays so I don’t know how teachers are getting trained or getting time for planning/grading.

Hint: "Teacher training" aka professional development is a joke 99.9% of the time and if teachers had the chance at longer summers vs a few extra hours to grade on a half day, they'd gladly take the longer summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For all of you moaning about learning loss, I'm looking at other counties and they start later than MoCo AND get out earlier. Garrett- Start: Sept. 6 End: June 7 Harford: Sept 6-June 13 Queen Anne's August 29-June 8..Somerset August 29-June 8th, Wicomico- Sept 6-June 14, Worcester: September 6-June 13....so they have the right idea of what a school year should look like. MoCo insists on extra days where no work is actually done because students are more than checked out at that point. Common sense, which not a shocker, but MoCo residents tend not to have.

Some of them have basically a long weekend for Spring Break and don’t take into consideration any other non-Christian holidays because they have a much less diverse population of students and staff. They also don’t have many teacher workdays so I don’t know how teachers are getting trained or getting time for planning/grading.

Which school district doesn’t have a week for spring break? I bet you are right though about fewer days off for religious holidays throughout the year, those do add up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Option A. International families need longer winter break so they can travel to countries like India in the cooler months.

International families have been taking trips like this for years and will continue to do so. As a teacher, I am sympathetic to the need for them to do so and do understand that it causes some extra work on the part of students and teachers when this happens, but it involves a very low percentage of our students. I do not think it is justified to disrupt the winter months to this extent for a very low number of families. We can accommodate their needs in a respectful way while still allowing the educational program to continue without the disruption of such a long winter break.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For all of you moaning about learning loss, I'm looking at other counties and they start later than MoCo AND get out earlier. Garrett- Start: Sept. 6 End: June 7 Harford: Sept 6-June 13 Queen Anne's August 29-June 8..Somerset August 29-June 8th, Wicomico- Sept 6-June 14, Worcester: September 6-June 13....so they have the right idea of what a school year should look like. MoCo insists on extra days where no work is actually done because students are more than checked out at that point. Common sense, which not a shocker, but MoCo residents tend not to have.

Some of them have basically a long weekend for Spring Break and don’t take into consideration any other non-Christian holidays because they have a much less diverse population of students and staff. They also don’t have many teacher workdays so I don’t know how teachers are getting trained or getting time for planning/grading.

Hint: "Teacher training" aka professional development is a joke 99.9% of the time and if teachers had the chance at longer summers vs a few extra hours to grade on a half day, they'd gladly take the longer summer.

I’m a teacher and I disagree. The long hours I spend 4-5 days a week grading at home are stressing me out and disrupting my family life in a way that a couple extra weeks of summer (at most) will not fix. I’d rather have a half day once a week like the school system I grew up in. Every Wed was a half day. Teachers had meetings and planning time. Nearly every student went to the free or low cost rec center programs until the normal dismissal time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For all of you moaning about learning loss, I'm looking at other counties and they start later than MoCo AND get out earlier. Garrett- Start: Sept. 6 End: June 7 Harford: Sept 6-June 13 Queen Anne's August 29-June 8..Somerset August 29-June 8th, Wicomico- Sept 6-June 14, Worcester: September 6-June 13....so they have the right idea of what a school year should look like. MoCo insists on extra days where no work is actually done because students are more than checked out at that point. Common sense, which not a shocker, but MoCo residents tend not to have.

Some of them have basically a long weekend for Spring Break and don’t take into consideration any other non-Christian holidays because they have a much less diverse population of students and staff. They also don’t have many teacher workdays so I don’t know how teachers are getting trained or getting time for planning/grading.

Hint: "Teacher training" aka professional development is a joke 99.9% of the time and if teachers had the chance at longer summers vs a few extra hours to grade on a half day, they'd gladly take the longer summer.

I’m a teacher and I disagree. The long hours I spend 4-5 days a week grading at home are stressing me out and disrupting my family life in a way that a couple extra weeks of summer (at most) will not fix. I’d rather have a half day once a week like the school system I grew up in. Every Wed was a half day. Teachers had meetings and planning time. Nearly every student went to the free or low cost rec center programs until the normal dismissal time.

So many schools all over the country have one half day a week (and have a regular 180 day schedule)...Sane people resides there. That would never happen here. Can you imagine? The MoCo parents would lose their minds..LEARNING LOSS! They have absolutely no critical thinking skills outside of what they think is best and ignore what other schools all over the country do as standard practices. They'd just blame MCEA and teachers like they always do.