When will makeup days be announced?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be no make up days. This is an unusual situation and county will get a waiver. As will all the other counties in the DMV. It has happened in the past, in 2009.

Did we only have ONE built in snow day in 2009? There have to be some repercussions for such poor planning

Apparently not if you're MCPS. Anne Arundel have Baltimore have 3 snow days built into their calendar, and submitted their virtual learning plan to MSDE so they could offer online instruction last week.

MCPS is the slacker school district, despite its massive budget. It had a deficit of 3 snow days last year, yet...here we are with a deficit of 5 snow days this year.

Who could have predicted there might be snow?

You all fail to see the problem. Other counties do not have Jewish holidays, Muslim holidays, lunar, diwali days off. Also those counties are much smaller. We have parents here who want to have religious holidays, don’t want to start earlier in August, and want to end in mid june and don’t want virtual learning. Too bad mcps is stuck with such parents who want everything and then complain when they cant.

Those days are not off because MCPS has a huge desire to celebrate them. They are non-instructional days because teachers wanted more grading days built into the calendar, and it was more palatable to add in Lunar New Year, Diwali etc. because they already had three Jewish holidays and several Christian holidays. If they weren't on those holidays, they would be non-instructional days elsewhere in the calendar.

This is absolutely not true. The teacher's union did not have a hand in this one. It was the school board that wanted to cater to every greasy wheel who wanted a holiday celebrated. That is not meant to minimize these holidays, as they are important to those who celebrate them. But in a county that allows students and staff to take excused absences for all applicable religious/cultural holidays, we should NOT be cancelling school for holidays where fewer than 15% of the student/staff population celebrate. It's ridiculous and the largest problem in our school calendar. This had NOTHING to do with teacher workdays.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:MCPS definitely needs to start school in the 2nd week of August to add built in snow days as well as to compensate for all the religious holidays we get off in order to get 180 days of instruction. Or just get rid of all the religious holidays.

Sports and band start then. Not going to work.

Is there a reason those things need to happen before the school year starts? Or is it that they need to start in early August to have enough practice time to be ready for the sports season (which presumably would start at the same time when it the school year starts earlier)? Genuine question.

[Anonymous]

Did they decide if Feb 17 and Mar 20 can be open?

[Anonymous]

Feb 17 was off for new years or something not sure why that has to still be closed. Makes more sense to get kids in schools on Feb 17 than in mid June

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Feb 17 was off for new years or something not sure why that has to still be closed. Makes more sense to get kids in schools on Feb 17 than in mid June

I don’t think they can but I would love it if we could lose Feb 16 and 17, just based on having been off school so may days recently in cold miserable weather. Other days I will be sad to see go. But I know I’d feel differently if I were a teacher who had planned to use those days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feb 17 was off for new years or something not sure why that has to still be closed. Makes more sense to get kids in schools on Feb 17 than in mid June

I don’t think they can but I would love it if we could lose Feb 16 and 17, just based on having been off school so may days recently in cold miserable weather. Other days I will be sad to see go. But I know I’d feel differently if I were a teacher who had planned to use those days.

Teachers just got a full paid week of vacation. Sorry not sorry. Take those days...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feb 17 was off for new years or something not sure why that has to still be closed. Makes more sense to get kids in schools on Feb 17 than in mid June

I don’t think they can but I would love it if we could lose Feb 16 and 17, just based on having been off school so may days recently in cold miserable weather. Other days I will be sad to see go. But I know I’d feel differently if I were a teacher who had planned to use those days.

Teachers just got a full paid week of vacation. Sorry not sorry. Take those days...

Like I said this would suit me, but I feel for people who planned vacations. Might not staffing be an issue?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Feb 17 was off for new years or something not sure why that has to still be closed. Makes more sense to get kids in schools on Feb 17 than in mid June

I don’t think they can but I would love it if we could lose Feb 16 and 17, just based on having been off school so may days recently in cold miserable weather. Other days I will be sad to see go. But I know I’d feel differently if I were a teacher who had planned to use those days.

Teachers just got a full paid week of vacation. Sorry not sorry. Take those days...

Like I said this would suit me, but I feel for people who planned vacations. Might not staffing be an issue?

I really don't see them using those February days which had not already been designated on the calendar as makeup days, and which are also only 2 weeks away.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be no make up days. This is an unusual situation and county will get a waiver. As will all the other counties in the DMV. It has happened in the past, in 2009.

Did we only have ONE built in snow day in 2009? There have to be some repercussions for such poor planning

Apparently not if you're MCPS. Anne Arundel have Baltimore have 3 snow days built into their calendar, and submitted their virtual learning plan to MSDE so they could offer online instruction last week.

MCPS is the slacker school district, despite its massive budget. It had a deficit of 3 snow days last year, yet...here we are with a deficit of 5 snow days this year.

Who could have predicted there might be snow?

You all fail to see the problem. Other counties do not have Jewish holidays, Muslim holidays, lunar, diwali days off. Also those counties are much smaller. We have parents here who want to have religious holidays, don’t want to start earlier in August, and want to end in mid june and don’t want virtual learning. Too bad mcps is stuck with such parents who want everything and then complain when they cant.

Those days are not off because MCPS has a huge desire to celebrate them. They are non-instructional days because teachers wanted more grading days built into the calendar, and it was more palatable to add in Lunar New Year, Diwali etc. because they already had three Jewish holidays and several Christian holidays. If they weren't on those holidays, they would be non-instructional days elsewhere in the calendar.

This is absolutely not true. The teacher's union did not have a hand in this one. It was the school board that wanted to cater to every greasy wheel who wanted a holiday celebrated. That is not meant to minimize these holidays, as they are important to those who celebrate them. But in a county that allows students and staff to take excused absences for all applicable religious/cultural holidays, we should NOT be cancelling school for holidays where fewer than 15% of the student/staff population celebrate. It's ridiculous and the largest problem in our school calendar. This had NOTHING to do with teacher workdays.

Of course it does. Teachers require a certain number of non-instructional days per year. Why not use those days to give groups a day off on their holiday? If teachers didn't have those non-instructional days, MCPS wouldn't have included Eid and Diwali and Lunar New Year in the calendar. They wouldn't have had the space to do it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be no make up days. This is an unusual situation and county will get a waiver. As will all the other counties in the DMV. It has happened in the past, in 2009.

Did we only have ONE built in snow day in 2009? There have to be some repercussions for such poor planning

Apparently not if you're MCPS. Anne Arundel have Baltimore have 3 snow days built into their calendar, and submitted their virtual learning plan to MSDE so they could offer online instruction last week.

MCPS is the slacker school district, despite its massive budget. It had a deficit of 3 snow days last year, yet...here we are with a deficit of 5 snow days this year.

Who could have predicted there might be snow?

You all fail to see the problem. Other counties do not have Jewish holidays, Muslim holidays, lunar, diwali days off. Also those counties are much smaller. We have parents here who want to have religious holidays, don’t want to start earlier in August, and want to end in mid june and don’t want virtual learning. Too bad mcps is stuck with such parents who want everything and then complain when they cant.

Those days are not off because MCPS has a huge desire to celebrate them. They are non-instructional days because teachers wanted more grading days built into the calendar, and it was more palatable to add in Lunar New Year, Diwali etc. because they already had three Jewish holidays and several Christian holidays. If they weren't on those holidays, they would be non-instructional days elsewhere in the calendar.

This is absolutely not true. The teacher's union did not have a hand in this one. It was the school board that wanted to cater to every greasy wheel who wanted a holiday celebrated. That is not meant to minimize these holidays, as they are important to those who celebrate them. But in a county that allows students and staff to take excused absences for all applicable religious/cultural holidays, we should NOT be cancelling school for holidays where fewer than 15% of the student/staff population celebrate. It's ridiculous and the largest problem in our school calendar. This had NOTHING to do with teacher workdays.

Of course it does. Teachers require a certain number of non-instructional days per year. Why not use those days to give groups a day off on their holiday? If teachers didn't have those non-instructional days, MCPS wouldn't have included Eid and Diwali and Lunar New Year in the calendar. They wouldn't have had the space to do it.

Then we have to be okay that when we legitimately need to use one of those days as makeup from snow events that we're not "taking someone's holiday away"

[Anonymous]

There are days at towards the second half of June that can be used.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are days at towards the second half of June that can be used.

Which will be throw away days that most students will miss and where teachers will just show movies. Not the intention…

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be no make up days. This is an unusual situation and county will get a waiver. As will all the other counties in the DMV. It has happened in the past, in 2009.

Did we only have ONE built in snow day in 2009? There have to be some repercussions for such poor planning

Apparently not if you're MCPS. Anne Arundel have Baltimore have 3 snow days built into their calendar, and submitted their virtual learning plan to MSDE so they could offer online instruction last week.

MCPS is the slacker school district, despite its massive budget. It had a deficit of 3 snow days last year, yet...here we are with a deficit of 5 snow days this year.

Who could have predicted there might be snow?

You all fail to see the problem. Other counties do not have Jewish holidays, Muslim holidays, lunar, diwali days off. Also those counties are much smaller. We have parents here who want to have religious holidays, don’t want to start earlier in August, and want to end in mid june and don’t want virtual learning. Too bad mcps is stuck with such parents who want everything and then complain when they cant.

Those days are not off because MCPS has a huge desire to celebrate them. They are non-instructional days because teachers wanted more grading days built into the calendar, and it was more palatable to add in Lunar New Year, Diwali etc. because they already had three Jewish holidays and several Christian holidays. If they weren't on those holidays, they would be non-instructional days elsewhere in the calendar.

This is absolutely not true. The teacher's union did not have a hand in this one. It was the school board that wanted to cater to every greasy wheel who wanted a holiday celebrated. That is not meant to minimize these holidays, as they are important to those who celebrate them. But in a county that allows students and staff to take excused absences for all applicable religious/cultural holidays, we should NOT be cancelling school for holidays where fewer than 15% of the student/staff population celebrate. It's ridiculous and the largest problem in our school calendar. This had NOTHING to do with teacher workdays.

Of course it does. Teachers require a certain number of non-instructional days per year. Why not use those days to give groups a day off on their holiday? If teachers didn't have those non-instructional days, MCPS wouldn't have included Eid and Diwali and Lunar New Year in the calendar. They wouldn't have had the space to do it.

Then we have to be okay that when we legitimately need to use one of those days as makeup from snow events that we're not "taking someone's holiday away"

I'm fine with it. Take away Eid, Lunar New Year and Easter Monday while you're at it. You could take away Diwali and the three Jewish holidays last year, but they're already completed and I don't have a time machine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be no make up days. This is an unusual situation and county will get a waiver. As will all the other counties in the DMV. It has happened in the past, in 2009.

Did we only have ONE built in snow day in 2009? There have to be some repercussions for such poor planning

Apparently not if you're MCPS. Anne Arundel have Baltimore have 3 snow days built into their calendar, and submitted their virtual learning plan to MSDE so they could offer online instruction last week.

MCPS is the slacker school district, despite its massive budget. It had a deficit of 3 snow days last year, yet...here we are with a deficit of 5 snow days this year.

Who could have predicted there might be snow?

Now compare the size of MCPS to Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There will be no make up days. This is an unusual situation and county will get a waiver. As will all the other counties in the DMV. It has happened in the past, in 2009.

Did we only have ONE built in snow day in 2009? There have to be some repercussions for such poor planning

Apparently not if you're MCPS. Anne Arundel have Baltimore have 3 snow days built into their calendar, and submitted their virtual learning plan to MSDE so they could offer online instruction last week.

MCPS is the slacker school district, despite its massive budget. It had a deficit of 3 snow days last year, yet...here we are with a deficit of 5 snow days this year.

Who could have predicted there might be snow?

Now compare the size of MCPS to Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties.

NYC is 10x larger than MCPS and managed to open every single day last week. And they have more than one snow day built into the calendar too. And school buses.