Creating a mock 2023-2024 FCPS Calendar

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Make every week no more than a 4-day school week. If there's not a federal/religious/other holiday, make the day off a Monday or a Friday. Generally align them so there's intermittent 2-day/4-day weekends (rather than continuous 3-day weekends). Still allows for a month of summer vacation. Students and teachers get more opportunities to breathe and catch up throughout the school year, and avoids the worst of summer academic slide by limiting the contiguous time off to a month.

Many people would hate this. I would love this.

Wtf no.

[Anonymous]

Two weeks over the new year, a week at thanksgiving, a week in the spring, and a few random federal holidays. Why is this hard?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Two weeks over the new year, a week at thanksgiving, a week in the spring, and a few random federal holidays. Why is this hard?

It's not. It's just that we have an incompetent SB and some loud, vocal parents who happen to be teachers who don't want to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And then school will end June 21st because of people insistence on an insanely long winter break.

Winter break is not the issue.

Most districts around the cohntry have 2 weeks winter break and 1 week spring break.

The issue in fcps is all of the stupid teacher work days.

And the recently added religious holidays for "equity".

Why did you put quotation marks around “equity”?

It was performative. They had to make the religious holidays into "O" days because county lawyers warned they would get sued for violating the US constitution. The school board didn't obtain any data showing these religious holidays corresponded to a large rate of absences which would provide a secular reason for having a school day off during a religious holiday. Actual data would easily show that some of the religious holidays had enough absences but probably not all of them. Instead, the school board didn't do the work but opted to honor hand picked religious holidays over others based on their personal "equity" concerns.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And then school will end June 21st because of people insistence on an insanely long winter break.

Winter break is not the issue.

Most districts around the cohntry have 2 weeks winter break and 1 week spring break.

The issue in fcps is all of the stupid teacher work days.

And the recently added religious holidays for "equity".

Why did you put quotation marks around “equity”?

It was performative. They had to make the religious holidays into "O" days because county lawyers warned they would get sued for violating the US constitution. The school board didn't obtain any data showing these religious holidays corresponded to a large rate of absences which would provide a secular reason for having a school day off during a religious holiday. Actual data would easily show that some of the religious holidays had enough absences but probably not all of them. Instead, the school board didn't do the work but opted to honor hand picked religious holidays over others based on their personal "equity" concerns.

They did look at attendance for the dates last year. I remember because I saw the document on Board Docs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And then school will end June 21st because of people insistence on an insanely long winter break.

Winter break is not the issue.

Most districts around the cohntry have 2 weeks winter break and 1 week spring break.

The issue in fcps is all of the stupid teacher work days.

And the recently added religious holidays for "equity".

Why did you put quotation marks around “equity”?

It was performative. They had to make the religious holidays into "O" days because county lawyers warned they would get sued for violating the US constitution. The school board didn't obtain any data showing these religious holidays corresponded to a large rate of absences which would provide a secular reason for having a school day off during a religious holiday. Actual data would easily show that some of the religious holidays had enough absences but probably not all of them. Instead, the school board didn't do the work but opted to honor hand picked religious holidays over others based on their personal "equity" concerns.

They did look at attendance for the dates last year. I remember because I saw the document on Board Docs.

Yes they looked at them. And the data showed no massive spike in absences to justify closing the entire system. The main “alignment with other systems” issue that they pointed to was the spring break mismatch since understandably having zero spring break teachers could do with their kids (if they worked in a different system from where they lived) was not popular.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Make every week no more than a 4-day school week. If there's not a federal/religious/other holiday, make the day off a Monday or a Friday. Generally align them so there's intermittent 2-day/4-day weekends (rather than continuous 3-day weekends). Still allows for a month of summer vacation. Students and teachers get more opportunities to breathe and catch up throughout the school year, and avoids the worst of summer academic slide by limiting the contiguous time off to a month.

Many people would hate this. I would love this.

Do full-time two-parent-working households exist in your fantasy land? Or have you planned to reconfigure our society at large, along with this ridiculous calendar?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And then school will end June 21st because of people insistence on an insanely long winter break.

Winter break is not the issue.

Most districts around the cohntry have 2 weeks winter break and 1 week spring break.

The issue in fcps is all of the stupid teacher work days.

And the recently added religious holidays for "equity".

Why did you put quotation marks around “equity”?

It was performative. They had to make the religious holidays into "O" days because county lawyers warned they would get sued for violating the US constitution. The school board didn't obtain any data showing these religious holidays corresponded to a large rate of absences which would provide a secular reason for having a school day off during a religious holiday. Actual data would easily show that some of the religious holidays had enough absences but probably not all of them. Instead, the school board didn't do the work but opted to honor hand picked religious holidays over others based on their personal "equity" concerns.

An interfaith task force was convened by the SB to advise on religious equity in the calendar, and that task force recommended four days to add to the calendar. The days weren't "hand picked" by the SB for personal reasons. The task force was convened in the first place, because existing rules about what could and couldn't be assigned/schedule on minority religious holidays were regularly ignored by teachers and staff. The O days were ridiculous and performative, but the initial directive the SB gave the task force to improve religious equity was not performative, but a direct response to an ongoing problem for students of minority faiths.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two weeks over the new year, a week at thanksgiving, a week in the spring, and a few random federal holidays. Why is this hard?

It's not. It's just that we have an incompetent SB and some loud, vocal parents who happen to be teachers who don't want to work.

I’m not a fan of the current calendar. It’s choppy. I don’t understand your point. Their contract is still 195 days however those days fall and the students still have 180, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Two weeks over the new year, a week at thanksgiving, a week in the spring, and a few random federal holidays. Why is this hard?

It's not. It's just that we have an incompetent SB and some loud, vocal parents who happen to be teachers who don't want to work.

I’m not a fan of the current calendar. It’s choppy. I don’t understand your point. Their contract is still 195 days however those days fall and the students still have 180, right?

I think their point is that teachers want students out of the classroom throughout the year, instead of a few longer breaks. I don’t know why they would prefer that, other than needing more time to perform work during the week without students present. This is something I have heard teacher parents I know say. The breaks are good for them because it means they can do grading or whatever other admin work they need to do. Regardless, the “solution” doesn’t serve students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Make every week no more than a 4-day school week. If there's not a federal/religious/other holiday, make the day off a Monday or a Friday. Generally align them so there's intermittent 2-day/4-day weekends (rather than continuous 3-day weekends). Still allows for a month of summer vacation. Students and teachers get more opportunities to breathe and catch up throughout the school year, and avoids the worst of summer academic slide by limiting the contiguous time off to a month.

Many people would hate this. I would love this.

Do full-time two-parent-working households exist in your fantasy land? Or have you planned to reconfigure our society at large, along with this ridiculous calendar?

Yes, I live on one such household.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:While we are all waiting for a few more months until the official calendar, it isn't really too hard to get close to figuring out what the calendar will look like.

Per VA codes:

*The school year must be 180 days or a minimum of 990 hours
*The following holidays are observed: Labor Day, Indigenous Peoples' Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, MLK Day, Presidents' Day and Memorial Day
*Thanksgiving vacation will be Wednesday through Friday
*Winter vacation will be 5-10 days, depending on when the legal holidays fall. The school week before or after the holiday should be at least two days.
*Spring vacation is a full M-F week

Apparent FCPS preferences:

*Add the following holidays (usually as teacher workdays): Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Diwali, Orthodox Good Friday, Eid al Fitr, Lunar New Year.
*Provide teacher workdays at the end of each Quarter
*Election Day is a holiday
*Winter Break goes through January 2nd
*Spring Break is the first week of April

Calendar specifics for 2023-2024:

*With Christmas/New Years on a Monday, the regulations would favor a shorter 11-day Winter Break. Saturday 12/23 - Tuesday 1/2
*Easter falls on Sunday, March 31st, 2024, so Spring Break the first week of April is a near certainty
*Diwali and Lunar New Year are on weekends and will not be observed

If you plug all of that into a calendar that starts on Monday, August 21st, 2023 and ends on Friday, June 14th, 2023, you end up with 184 days. So, there are ~4 days to play with depending on how you structure the end of the quarters.


Potential options are to:

*Start or end the school year with partial weeks
*Add days to Winter Break (such as Thursday 12/21 and Friday 12/22)
*Provide an extended Spring Break (Eid is on Wednesday 4/10, so the Mon/Tue of that week)
*Provide random days off

So, what say you, cranky DCUM posters?

Absolute no to adding religious holidays of any stripe. Why do we fight so hard to keep religion out of schools only to bring it back willfully? Sorry but to the religious conservative Christians, Muslims, and Jews, you can take the days off that you need with your family. I don't want school shut down for religion.

I know, but Christmas! It is a federal holiday that is not going anywhere and there is zero that we can do about it. Once you start carving out for one religion, you need to include them all. So hard no. Fed only coupled with the teacher work days at the end of quarter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And then school will end June 21st because of people insistence on an insanely long winter break.

Winter break is not the issue.

Most districts around the cohntry have 2 weeks winter break and 1 week spring break.

The issue in fcps is all of the stupid teacher work days.

And the recently added religious holidays for "equity".

Why did you put quotation marks around “equity”?

It was performative. They had to make the religious holidays into "O" days because county lawyers warned they would get sued for violating the US constitution. The school board didn't obtain any data showing these religious holidays corresponded to a large rate of absences which would provide a secular reason for having a school day off during a religious holiday. Actual data would easily show that some of the religious holidays had enough absences but probably not all of them. Instead, the school board didn't do the work but opted to honor hand picked religious holidays over others based on their personal "equity" concerns.

An interfaith task force was convened by the SB to advise on religious equity in the calendar, and that task force recommended four days to add to the calendar. The days weren't "hand picked" by the SB for personal reasons. The task force was convened in the first place, because existing rules about what could and couldn't be assigned/schedule on minority religious holidays were regularly ignored by teachers and staff. The O days were ridiculous and performative, but the initial directive the SB gave the task force to improve religious equity was not performative, but a direct response to an ongoing problem for students of minority faiths.

What "ongoing problem" were students of minority faiths experiencing? Anyone can take a day off from school for any reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While we are all waiting for a few more months until the official calendar, it isn't really too hard to get close to figuring out what the calendar will look like.

Per VA codes:

*The school year must be 180 days or a minimum of 990 hours
*The following holidays are observed: Labor Day, Indigenous Peoples' Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, MLK Day, Presidents' Day and Memorial Day
*Thanksgiving vacation will be Wednesday through Friday
*Winter vacation will be 5-10 days, depending on when the legal holidays fall. The school week before or after the holiday should be at least two days.
*Spring vacation is a full M-F week

Apparent FCPS preferences:

*Add the following holidays (usually as teacher workdays): Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Diwali, Orthodox Good Friday, Eid al Fitr, Lunar New Year.
*Provide teacher workdays at the end of each Quarter
*Election Day is a holiday
*Winter Break goes through January 2nd
*Spring Break is the first week of April

Calendar specifics for 2023-2024:

*With Christmas/New Years on a Monday, the regulations would favor a shorter 11-day Winter Break. Saturday 12/23 - Tuesday 1/2
*Easter falls on Sunday, March 31st, 2024, so Spring Break the first week of April is a near certainty
*Diwali and Lunar New Year are on weekends and will not be observed

If you plug all of that into a calendar that starts on Monday, August 21st, 2023 and ends on Friday, June 14th, 2023, you end up with 184 days. So, there are ~4 days to play with depending on how you structure the end of the quarters.


Potential options are to:

*Start or end the school year with partial weeks
*Add days to Winter Break (such as Thursday 12/21 and Friday 12/22)
*Provide an extended Spring Break (Eid is on Wednesday 4/10, so the Mon/Tue of that week)
*Provide random days off

So, what say you, cranky DCUM posters?

Absolute no to adding religious holidays of any stripe. Why do we fight so hard to keep religion out of schools only to bring it back willfully? Sorry but to the religious conservative Christians, Muslims, and Jews, you can take the days off that you need with your family. I don't want school shut down for religion.

I know, but Christmas! It is a federal holiday that is not going anywhere and there is zero that we can do about it. Once you start carving out for one religion, you need to include them all. So hard no. Fed only coupled with the teacher work days at the end of quarter.

Umm, Christmas isn't a holiday on the school calendar, so I guess we're good.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While we are all waiting for a few more months until the official calendar, it isn't really too hard to get close to figuring out what the calendar will look like.

Per VA codes:

*The school year must be 180 days or a minimum of 990 hours
*The following holidays are observed: Labor Day, Indigenous Peoples' Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year's Day, MLK Day, Presidents' Day and Memorial Day
*Thanksgiving vacation will be Wednesday through Friday
*Winter vacation will be 5-10 days, depending on when the legal holidays fall. The school week before or after the holiday should be at least two days.
*Spring vacation is a full M-F week

Apparent FCPS preferences:

*Add the following holidays (usually as teacher workdays): Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Diwali, Orthodox Good Friday, Eid al Fitr, Lunar New Year.
*Provide teacher workdays at the end of each Quarter
*Election Day is a holiday
*Winter Break goes through January 2nd
*Spring Break is the first week of April

Calendar specifics for 2023-2024:

*With Christmas/New Years on a Monday, the regulations would favor a shorter 11-day Winter Break. Saturday 12/23 - Tuesday 1/2
*Easter falls on Sunday, March 31st, 2024, so Spring Break the first week of April is a near certainty
*Diwali and Lunar New Year are on weekends and will not be observed

If you plug all of that into a calendar that starts on Monday, August 21st, 2023 and ends on Friday, June 14th, 2023, you end up with 184 days. So, there are ~4 days to play with depending on how you structure the end of the quarters.


Potential options are to:

*Start or end the school year with partial weeks
*Add days to Winter Break (such as Thursday 12/21 and Friday 12/22)
*Provide an extended Spring Break (Eid is on Wednesday 4/10, so the Mon/Tue of that week)
*Provide random days off

So, what say you, cranky DCUM posters?

Absolute no to adding religious holidays of any stripe. Why do we fight so hard to keep religion out of schools only to bring it back willfully? Sorry but to the religious conservative Christians, Muslims, and Jews, you can take the days off that you need with your family. I don't want school shut down for religion.

I know, but Christmas! It is a federal holiday that is not going anywhere and there is zero that we can do about it. Once you start carving out for one religion, you need to include them all. So hard no. Fed only coupled with the teacher work days at the end of quarter.

Umm, Christmas isn't a holiday on the school calendar, so I guess we're good.

What do you think Winter Break is for?