How DO we get the calendar changed?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shorten winter break!!!

No, please do not shorten winter break.

Remove religious holidays that aren't federal holidays.

Maybe. YK should still be a holiday.

Cut some federal holidays.

Which ones?

Columbus and Veterans for a start. That already appears to be on the table.

Presidents’ Day could be a teacher workday. As well, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

And Thanksgiving. It is a grown ups holiday. The kids should be there for Christmas for the photos. It looks good to have them there and I have the day off already, but get them back to school new years say- who wants the kids around for that? I need to recover from the party!

I’m sorry this bothers you but we don’t need 40 days off. Doubling a couple teacher workdays to Federal holidays/vacation add-ons doesn’t keep kids in class on Thanksgiving, it keeps them in class on random Tuesdays in February.

Oh, now I get it, you still want your kids home, you just think TEACHERS should be working those days. Yeah, those women should be stuck in the classroom for those long holiday weekends. They should have to travel on thanksgiving while the rest of their families travel the day before. Stick to those ladies! YEAH!

We don’t need 40 days off. Another way to look at it is I want TEACHERS to have a longer summer break to spend with their families.

I’m a teacher. If you ask my opinion, I’ll tell you I want a shorter summer.

As it is, I am a teacher 10 months a year and a parent for 2 months. I spend more time focusing on others’ children during the school year and my own kids take a backseat to my job.

I’d like more balance, giving me the chance to be a parent during the year, too. That can only occur if my job stops taking so many of my off-hours. I’m actually a huge supporter of year-round schooling since I would be able to more strategically use breaks for planning.

But no one asked. This is a thread about improving the calendar for a different constituency— children and families. You could start a thread about how we could get your round schooling.

Somebody said she wanted teachers to have longer summers, and I simply replied that I wouldn’t want that. I wasn’t rude, so no need to respond rudely.

I am a parent, too. I am also impacted by teacher workdays and other days off. I also have to find childcare. Perhaps the calendar bothers me less because I understand the NEED for teacher workdays. I understand how they benefit students overall because they give teachers time to improve units, provide feedback, and overall increase teacher productivity. Therefore, they don’t come across as 100% aggravating to me. Perhaps they can be aligned with federal holidays. Fine. That helps many parents, but not all. For example, I’d still be finding childcare.

But the rudeness. Just please stop.

[Anonymous]

I don't know if anyone has posted this yet, but at the elementary level, they are canceling the April early release Wednesday because of the surprise Election Day off. So someone is listening.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Shorten winter break!!!

No, please do not shorten winter break.

Remove religious holidays that aren't federal holidays.

Maybe. YK should still be a holiday.

Cut some federal holidays.

Which ones?

Columbus and Veterans for a start. That already appears to be on the table.

Presidents’ Day could be a teacher workday. As well, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.

And Thanksgiving. It is a grown ups holiday. The kids should be there for Christmas for the photos. It looks good to have them there and I have the day off already, but get them back to school new years say- who wants the kids around for that? I need to recover from the party!

I’m sorry this bothers you but we don’t need 40 days off. Doubling a couple teacher workdays to Federal holidays/vacation add-ons doesn’t keep kids in class on Thanksgiving, it keeps them in class on random Tuesdays in February.

Oh, now I get it, you still want your kids home, you just think TEACHERS should be working those days. Yeah, those women should be stuck in the classroom for those long holiday weekends. They should have to travel on thanksgiving while the rest of their families travel the day before. Stick to those ladies! YEAH!

We don’t need 40 days off. Another way to look at it is I want TEACHERS to have a longer summer break to spend with their families.

I’m a teacher. If you ask my opinion, I’ll tell you I want a shorter summer.

As it is, I am a teacher 10 months a year and a parent for 2 months. I spend more time focusing on others’ children during the school year and my own kids take a backseat to my job.

I’d like more balance, giving me the chance to be a parent during the year, too. That can only occur if my job stops taking so many of my off-hours. I’m actually a huge supporter of year-round schooling since I would be able to more strategically use breaks for planning.

But no one asked. This is a thread about improving the calendar for a different constituency— children and families. You could start a thread about how we could get your round schooling.

Somebody said she wanted teachers to have longer summers, and I simply replied that I wouldn’t want that. I wasn’t rude, so no need to respond rudely.

I am a parent, too. I am also impacted by teacher workdays and other days off. I also have to find childcare. Perhaps the calendar bothers me less because I understand the NEED for teacher workdays. I understand how they benefit students overall because they give teachers time to improve units, provide feedback, and overall increase teacher productivity. Therefore, they don’t come across as 100% aggravating to me. Perhaps they can be aligned with federal holidays. Fine. That helps many parents, but not all. For example, I’d still be finding childcare.

But the rudeness. Just please stop.

Agree, That was very rude and uncalled for. And we wonder how children are getting rude! We need to be better.

[Anonymous]

Did anyone make it through last night’s school board meeting? I was only able to catch bits and pieces. I think it ended up with:

- Indigenous People Day will remain a TW day
- Reid is limited to 8 early releases for elementary school, including the standard and of quarter releases.
- Veterans Day will become an instructional day
- They’ll send out surveys for the 27-28 and 28-29 calendars. Drafts of those calendars will be released in July (although there’s already a 27-28 calendar floating around.)

The early release thing is still going to be problematic. Reid will probably get rid of end of quarter early releases for elementary students to support her 3 hour early release days.

[Anonymous]

Garza ended early release Mondays in ES and that’s where all these problems of inconsistency, surprise time off and complaints from ES teachers about insufficient planning time began.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone make it through last night’s school board meeting? I was only able to catch bits and pieces. I think it ended up with:

- Indigenous People Day will remain a TW day
- Reid is limited to 8 early releases for elementary school, including the standard and of quarter releases.
- Veterans Day will become an instructional day
- They’ll send out surveys for the 27-28 and 28-29 calendars. Drafts of those calendars will be released in July (although there’s already a 27-28 calendar floating around.)

The early release thing is still going to be problematic. Reid will probably get rid of end of quarter early releases for elementary students to support her 3 hour early release days.

Elementary teachers have been screwed re planning time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone make it through last night’s school board meeting? I was only able to catch bits and pieces. I think it ended up with:

- Indigenous People Day will remain a TW day
- Reid is limited to 8 early releases for elementary school, including the standard and of quarter releases.
- Veterans Day will become an instructional day
- They’ll send out surveys for the 27-28 and 28-29 calendars. Drafts of those calendars will be released in July (although there’s already a 27-28 calendar floating around.)

The early release thing is still going to be problematic. Reid will probably get rid of end of quarter early releases for elementary students to support her 3 hour early release days.

Elementary teachers have been screwed re planning time

Get out of here lol

[Anonymous]

Why is the solution to add ONE day. Why is the solution not to reconstruct the calendar. Compare the number of school planning, teacher workdays and staff development days and elem early releases with other districts. Why can they seem plan and grade and teach students with out so many of these days? We are an outlier and every excuse is made for why we don’t have kids in school consistently with reasonably placed off teacher work days and consistent number of summer weeks. Other districts do it.

[Anonymous]

They are absolutely ridiculous!

No one wants surveys. Just fix the silly calendar in a manner that minimizes all these fragmented weeks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is the solution to add ONE day. Why is the solution not to reconstruct the calendar. Compare the number of school planning, teacher workdays and staff development days and elem early releases with other districts. Why can they seem plan and grade and teach students with out so many of these days? We are an outlier and every excuse is made for why we don’t have kids in school consistently with reasonably placed off teacher work days and consistent number of summer weeks. Other districts do it.

Apparently next year’s calendar is already out there so they don’t want to do major changes that would affect people who made plans based on that calendar. But they’re planning to do broader changes for subsequent years.

[Anonymous]

But I agree about the surveys. The last time they did those surveys, we all participated and then they selected a completely new calendar that wasn’t even on the survey. Definitely made people think they don’t actually care.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Garza ended early release Mondays in ES and that’s where all these problems of inconsistency, surprise time off and complaints from ES teachers about insufficient planning time began.

I disagree. When we had early release Mondays the time after the students left was often taken up with meetings or PD. The daily planning during specials was shorter and some of that time was also used for meetings, but that was before the CBA. ES teachers now have 300 minutes/week which is typically during 60 minute daily specials. The planning falls within the instructional day and 240 of the minutes are not used for CT meetings.

It could possibly work if specials remained at 60 minutes for the 4 days that were not early release days and that time was guaranteed as unencumbered planning time.

[Anonymous]

Next year the teachers have a SD and TW day on Monday and Tuesday June 21, 22. Assuming the last student day will now be the 16th will that back up the last two work days to the 17th and 18th?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Next year the teachers have a SD and TW day on Monday and Tuesday June 21, 22. Assuming the last student day will now be the 16th will that back up the last two work days to the 17th and 18th?

June 18 is the observed day for Juneteenth, so probably not. I don’t know how they’d handle having a single workday scheduled for that week. In June 2024, teachers had a year and TW after the last week of school that was sandwiched between Eid and Juneteenth and in June 2023 they only came in the Tuesday after Juneteenth, so I guess there’s precedence.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They are absolutely ridiculous!

No one wants surveys. Just fix the silly calendar in a manner that minimizes all these fragmented weeks!

You can’t fix the calendar without getting rid of religious/cultural holidays in an extraordinarily diverse county. Constituents of those communities should have the say on whether those days are student holidays. If Indians are good with school on Diwali, great. If Jewish folks are good with only one of Rosh/Yom and Muslims are good with only one of the Eid’s, also great. But, no, you can’t have a bunch of white/black school board members simply stating that we aren’t going to observe the non-Christian holidays anymore because parents are annoyed that they have to find child care.