2026-2027 calendar updates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The terms for end of the quarter grade entry time should be renegotiated with the teachers union. We should eliminate the non instructional days for entering grades at the end of the first 3 quarters and replace them each with two early release days instead, with teachers working their normal hours. Releasing students 2.5 hours early each of the last two days of the quarter would give teachers 5 hours of paid time to enter grades — almost as much time as they gain from one non instructional day — but this way, they’d all be instructional days and teachers would work the same hours for the same pay as they do now. If we did that for the first 3 quarters, we’d have 3 more instructional days built into the calendar, and voila, there’s your 4 built in inclement weather days, without starting the year earlier or ending later.

Anne Arundel county public schools calendar is allowed to have 177 days because they originally went this route for 180 days and people didn't like all the half days caused by the law. https://www.aacps.org/article/2490677

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s only April. You have over 3 months notice. Trips get messed up for any number of reasons. People need to stop being so inflexible and just deal with it. You cannot go through life without being inconvenienced now and again

How about those of our kids who work and lose the income or risk their jobs for the following year as they committed to working and now cannot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s only April. You have over 3 months notice. Trips get messed up for any number of reasons. People need to stop being so inflexible and just deal with it. You cannot go through life without being inconvenienced now and again

How about those of our kids who work and lose the income or risk their jobs for the following year as they committed to working and now cannot.

They are minors whose main job should be their schooling. Their employers can live with them cutting out of work a few days early to complete HS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s only April. You have over 3 months notice. Trips get messed up for any number of reasons. People need to stop being so inflexible and just deal with it. You cannot go through life without being inconvenienced now and again

+1. After the chaos around the end of school date this year, starting a few days earlier in August is nothing. I’m glad they’re actually building in a reasonable number of snow days next year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s only April. You have over 3 months notice. Trips get messed up for any number of reasons. People need to stop being so inflexible and just deal with it. You cannot go through life without being inconvenienced now and again

How about those of our kids who work and lose the income or risk their jobs for the following year as they committed to working and now cannot.

They are minors whose main job should be their schooling. Their employers can live with them cutting out of work a few days early to complete HS.

You realize the teens are the ones who work at the pools, and many other service jobs. So, no, they cannot live without them and those things will close. And, you are talking about week or two, not days. Many kids work summers to have spending money for the year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s only April. You have over 3 months notice. Trips get messed up for any number of reasons. People need to stop being so inflexible and just deal with it. You cannot go through life without being inconvenienced now and again

+1. After the chaos around the end of school date this year, starting a few days earlier in August is nothing. I’m glad they’re actually building in a reasonable number of snow days next year.

Hi again, Dr Taylor,

[Anonymous]

I hope MCPS is prepared not to have preservice because I sure as hell will be using my personal days if they start August 10. Most of my colleagues agree with me.

They can’t expect to pay staff for only 10 months and not give them two full months off

For the record, the new laws or whatever are not supposed to kick in into 27-28. There is NO REASON MCPS needs to change the schedule this late in the game.

Changing to VA schools is looking better and better every day

[Anonymous]

I've worked in the system for over twenty years at the elementary level and here are my thoughts...

1) Nobody likes transition day except for Dr. Taylor. It's a waste of time and screws over the K, 6th, and 9th grade teachers.

2) I would be okay with having half-days for grading and reporting in MP 1 and 3. I do think our secondary counterparts need the full day at the end of MP 2 to prepare for their second semester classes.

3) SPED teachers need more IEP writing days given to them but that doesn't impact whether school is open or closed. There's already not enough time to handle the paperwork on our quarterly grading days.

4) When I did my admin program we were told we closed for Christian and Jewish holidays in order to be able to function as a school system. If we remained open, there wouldn't be enough staff to operate the building. While I appreciate the diversity in our county, I don't know what percentage of staff and students celebrate some of the recent holiday additions to our calendar. Perhaps allow everyone excused absences or leave that day.

[Anonymous]

+1. After the chaos around the end of school date this year, starting a few days earlier in August is nothing. I’m glad they’re actually building in a reasonable number of snow days next year.

But wouldn’t starting and ending earlier just mean snow make-up days would be tacked on to extend the school year? Those days would be a waste and not provide academic learning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've worked in the system for over twenty years at the elementary level and here are my thoughts...

1) Nobody likes transition day except for Dr. Taylor. It's a waste of time and screws over the K, 6th, and 9th grade teachers.

2) I would be okay with having half-days for grading and reporting in MP 1 and 3. I do think our secondary counterparts need the full day at the end of MP 2 to prepare for their second semester classes.

3) SPED teachers need more IEP writing days given to them but that doesn't impact whether school is open or closed. There's already not enough time to handle the paperwork on our quarterly grading days.

4) When I did my admin program we were told we closed for Christian and Jewish holidays in order to be able to function as a school system. If we remained open, there wouldn't be enough staff to operate the building. While I appreciate the diversity in our county, I don't know what percentage of staff and students celebrate some of the recent holiday additions to our calendar. Perhaps allow everyone excused absences or leave that day.

At the HS level, the grading/planning days are extremely helpful. The half day this past week was stressful. I still haven’t finished finalizing grades and have to do it over the weekend. And before people jump in calling me lazy, I was running an AP mock exam for students on the afternoon of the half day so I didn’t get it off to work on grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+1. After the chaos around the end of school date this year, starting a few days earlier in August is nothing. I’m glad they’re actually building in a reasonable number of snow days next year.

But wouldn’t starting and ending earlier just mean snow make-up days would be tacked on to extend the school year? Those days would be a waste and not provide academic learning.

+1 ding ding ding

The proposed changes are just the same thing as this year but three days earlier. They aren't adding any extra days. Just allowing themselves to keep tacking on makeup days at the end of the year but before Juneteenth to comply with the State BOE's direction

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I like the early start idea. It is the best option. I hope Taylor sticks with it. AP scores will go up across the county.

Nobody cares about this

I’m so tired of the AP parents constantly weighing in and whining about this. Your kids aren’t learning critical information the first week of school. Stop pretending they are.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+1. After the chaos around the end of school date this year, starting a few days earlier in August is nothing. I’m glad they’re actually building in a reasonable number of snow days next year.

But wouldn’t starting and ending earlier just mean snow make-up days would be tacked on to extend the school year? Those days would be a waste and not provide academic learning.

+1 ding ding ding

The proposed changes are just the same thing as this year but three days earlier. They aren't adding any extra days. Just allowing themselves to keep tacking on makeup days at the end of the year but before Juneteenth to comply with the State BOE's direction

Exactly... adding snow days to the week of June 14 vs the week of June 21 is no difference. The end of the year is the end of the year. Same useless days, packing up classrooms, nice weather with high absenteeism in HS (AP's done), extra outdoor playtime in ES..

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

+1. After the chaos around the end of school date this year, starting a few days earlier in August is nothing. I’m glad they’re actually building in a reasonable number of snow days next year.

But wouldn’t starting and ending earlier just mean snow make-up days would be tacked on to extend the school year? Those days would be a waste and not provide academic learning.

+1 ding ding ding

The proposed changes are just the same thing as this year but three days earlier. They aren't adding any extra days. Just allowing themselves to keep tacking on makeup days at the end of the year but before Juneteenth to comply with the State BOE's direction

Exactly... adding snow days to the week of June 14 vs the week of June 21 is no difference. The end of the year is the end of the year. Same useless days, packing up classrooms, nice weather with high absenteeism in HS (AP's done), extra outdoor playtime in ES..

The alternatives would be:
- Starting the school year 3 days earlier but not changing the end date, instead making random days in April and May as makeup days (days that are noninstructional unless they are needed) - this will mean fewer 5 day school weeks during the year
- Going back to including 184 days of instruction in the calendar by starting the year earlier and/or eliminating holidays - they won't want to do this because they don't want to spend any extra money on providing instruction

I think they should do the latter by eliminating the transition day, and amending State Law so they can have school on President's Day and either Good Friday or Easter Monday (keep Spring Break to 5 days)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've worked in the system for over twenty years at the elementary level and here are my thoughts...

1) Nobody likes transition day except for Dr. Taylor. It's a waste of time and screws over the K, 6th, and 9th grade teachers.

2) I would be okay with having half-days for grading and reporting in MP 1 and 3. I do think our secondary counterparts need the full day at the end of MP 2 to prepare for their second semester classes.

3) SPED teachers need more IEP writing days given to them but that doesn't impact whether school is open or closed. There's already not enough time to handle the paperwork on our quarterly grading days.

4) When I did my admin program we were told we closed for Christian and Jewish holidays in order to be able to function as a school system. If we remained open, there wouldn't be enough staff to operate the building. While I appreciate the diversity in our county, I don't know what percentage of staff and students celebrate some of the recent holiday additions to our calendar. Perhaps allow everyone excused absences or leave that day.

I agree with this. They do not know if they need to close for operational reasons. Being open for religious holidays next year would let them collect data to determine whether there is an operational need to close moving forward -- another benefit of doing it.