Explain ridiculously early 2023/24 start date?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand being off for all the religious holidays. I am not familiar with the Muslim holidays or Indian, but don't most holidays start after 4pm? Dinner or night celebrations with family?

Why are October 31 and November 1 holidays? (We are in both FCPS and LCPS). As a kid I loved going to school on Halloween and talking about what we were going to be at night.

My vote would be for year round school with long breaks between quarters. Summer is too hot to do anything anyways, I'd much rather have camps or vacation in spring and fall.

Those dates aren’t holidays. School is in session.

Everyone has an opinion and preference and they don’t always match up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand being off for all the religious holidays. I am not familiar with the Muslim holidays or Indian, but don't most holidays start after 4pm? Dinner or night celebrations with family?

Why are October 31 and November 1 holidays? (We are in both FCPS and LCPS). As a kid I loved going to school on Halloween and talking about what we were going to be at night.

My vote would be for year round school with long breaks between quarters. Summer is too hot to do anything anyways, I'd much rather have camps or vacation in spring and fall.

Those dates aren’t holidays. School is in session.

Everyone has an opinion and preference and they don’t always match up.

Thank you for stating the obvious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand being off for all the religious holidays. I am not familiar with the Muslim holidays or Indian, but don't most holidays start after 4pm? Dinner or night celebrations with family?

Why are October 31 and November 1 holidays? (We are in both FCPS and LCPS). As a kid I loved going to school on Halloween and talking about what we were going to be at night.

My vote would be for year round school with long breaks between quarters. Summer is too hot to do anything anyways, I'd much rather have camps or vacation in spring and fall.

Those dates aren’t holidays. School is in session.

Everyone has an opinion and preference and they don’t always match up.

Thank you for stating the obvious.

Well, what’s the sense in saying, “Summer is too hot to do anything anyways. I’d much rather have camps or vacation in spring and fall”? Who gives a flying flip? People will go on and on, back and forth. I’d rather be off in the summer when we can go to the pool, so we cancel each other out. It’s moot.

[Anonymous]

Way to early. I could deal with August 28. I also did not vote for this early start but I guess a lot of people did.

[Anonymous]

The pits. Boo to whoever voted for this. 🤦‍♂️

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The pits. Boo to whoever voted for this. 🤦‍♂️

Nobody but the school board voted for this. If you recall, they joined the characteristics of two calendars together right before they voted on it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FCPS needs to tighten up its schedule. Yes, teachers have more administrative work than in the past but they have been doing it for years now. Judicious use of subs would allow teachers to do all the additional non-teaching functions during their regular work day.

Maybe the overhead at Gatehouse could help lighten the load for teachers rather than create more work for the front line teachers.

The need to start early to do well on AP exams is a weak excuse. Many states still start the day after Labor Day, have adequate school breaks and kids that receive 4s and 5s on AP exams on a regular basis.

Kids in fall sports have always started in August and families have arranged vacation schedules accordingly.

Inability to adopt a sensible calendar, yet another reason why FCPS is continuing its downward slide.

LOLOLOLOL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IF you want

Full 2 weeks + for Xmas break, (used to be 10 days, now it's more like 14-16 days)

+

Wed-Fri off at Tgiving (used to be only Thurs. and Fri. off with early release on Wed.)

+

A bunch of religious days off

+

ALL the federal holidays off

+

Full week for spring break

... well, at some point you are going to have start earlier and end later just to fit in something close to the required amount of hours.

You don't get to eat your piece of cake and save it at the same time. So, we start earlier and end later with a lot of messed up weeks in between.

The parents aren’t asking for that. We aren’t asking for 15 day Christmas and all those miscellaneous holidays for every religion now. Spring break has always been a week that they now unattached to Easter and then they add extra days around Easter too. Parents voted on a better calendar and the school board picked some crazy ass horrible schedule instead.

Want a calendar that only has holidays you personally celebrate? That’s called homeschool.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes it is true that many never go on vacation...but why should only the super rich who can pay premium prices be able to go? We can't even visit family over thanksgiving the flight prices are too high.

So yes, I suppose I can do a driving trip to visit family in august, but it would be nice if every once in awhile I can take my family to a resort in the off season (August).

It is positively insane that people are arguing that school calendars should be made to maximize their ability to travel internationally for 2+ weeks over the winter break

FIFY

You didn’t “fix” anything. Are you 12?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Drop AP and race to nowhere.
Start after Labor Day.
End in June.

AP is the most valuable program fcps offers in high school as it provides poor and middle class kids a way to cheaply pay for college.

Only a rich person living in a rich bubble would refer to AP classes as a race to nowhere.

There are other ways to identify students for scholarships.

APs are more important than going to “resorts” or kids playing with a ball. Sorry you don’t like it. Shrug.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Current calendar is fine. Teachers, students, parents, admin, support staff all have opinions. Those opinions differ both between and within each group (especially within parents, it seems). There are valid arguments for/against any of the various components of the calendar. There’s no perfect balancing of these but it seems an earnest effort was made to broadly solicit input.

Just because your personal preferences aren’t reflected in the end result doesn’t mean they weren’t considered… they just also considered others’ preferences as well. The most important thing is making the calendar decisions with enough lead time everyone can plan accordingly. Stop acting like there is a “right answer” to school calendar development and that if you just advocate hard enough you’ll convince people to see things your way and adopt your preferences.

Holy crap. Common sense — on DCUM!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here in California, school ended June 1st and they’re not going back until after labour day. I’m a nanny and need these kids to go back to school because I am seriously done. 3+ months of summer break with the parents wfh has been pure hell.

Strange, I have friends in California and they have posted back to school pictures already. So some kids in California are back in school. I suspect we’ll see more pictures from California next week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's just too early to start. Can this be changed for next year or is it written in stone?

It is not changing. This is the calendar.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Swim season and marching band are 9 weeks just on their own. NVSL is huge in this area. People want to go on vacation as a family. They need two weeks outside of swim and preseason high school activities to do so.

People are going to be like - swim is no reason to change the school calendar. Well guess what - there is no academic reason to change the school calendar either. The most academic reason anyone can come up with is AP tests & which affects such a small subset - I think it hardly justifies changing the calendar for 180,000. Those kids are the top of the top - they could study on their own before school starts if they really wanted to.

But summer recreational swim team does? I suspect there are a lot more AP students in school than summer swim team members. My neighborhood has an active swim team and I'm confident there are more AP students that live here.

NP here, I was curious so googled. NVSL has 19,000(!) kids participate and is the largest summer swim in the country. Considering that it pulls kids from K-12 I’m willing to argue it impacts more families schedules in the area than AP classes.

FCPS has 180,000 kids. NVSL pulls from how many counties in the area? So you are honestly arguing that we need the summer break set the way it is so that less then 10% of the County can participate in swim at private swim clubs in the NoVA area? Really?

Talk about a privileged, entitled position.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Remember- AP, SAT, ACT tests are administered regardless of the start date of school.

So it benefits the kids to start earlier.

School start date has no impact on SAT/ACT tests, and if plenty of time to cover a one semester college course over two semesters of high where more time is already given than most colleges course.

Starting in August and getting out later than the first week of a June should simply never happen. There is no exercise other than the inability of the school board and administration to act responsibly.

Pro Tip: Typing your opinion in bold doesn’t make it fact.