APS Proposing Additional Days Off in 24-25 School Year

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't the training be done during the religious holidays? No one celebrates ALL the holidays. Training/pd should be done on those days of your choosing. APS does not care about working families despite all their equity talk. The calendar proves it.

Because that would be working on a school holiday. Like working on Thanksgiving or MLK Jr day. Not everyone celebrates Presidents day, either.
I think they should have put them the Mon and Tue of Thanksgiving break week. Less disruptive to the routine of going to school. But I'm sure some teachers would complain that students and families get a week off for Thanksgiving travel but they can't do the same.

There are plenty of days where the kids don't have schools but teachers do. There is no job in America, including Arlington County, where all employees get all religious holidays off. It is completely reasonable to expect staff to complete professional training on religious holidays that they do not observe.

Because APS teachers work to a contracted number of days. They can’t just add work days to a contract and they cannot require professional development training outside of contract hours/days. The current teacher work days are already spoken for other purposes so they need to find a way to include these required trainings during teacher contracted time.

No they are not. Teachers are contracted for 200 work days. School days are supposed to be 180. This change takes us to 178 or 177. Cut out other nonmandatory training and start treating school like it’s essential. I’m with APE on this one.

The new Collective Bargaiing unit says we can’t have training outside of contract hours

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't the training be done during the religious holidays? No one celebrates ALL the holidays. Training/pd should be done on those days of your choosing. APS does not care about working families despite all their equity talk. The calendar proves it.

Because that would be working on a school holiday. Like working on Thanksgiving or MLK Jr day. Not everyone celebrates Presidents day, either.
I think they should have put them the Mon and Tue of Thanksgiving break week. Less disruptive to the routine of going to school. But I'm sure some teachers would complain that students and families get a week off for Thanksgiving travel but they can't do the same.

There are plenty of days where the kids don't have schools but teachers do. There is no job in America, including Arlington County, where all employees get all religious holidays off. It is completely reasonable to expect staff to complete professional training on religious holidays that they do not observe.

Not when those days are "holidays" on the APS calendar. Sudents who don't celebrate those religious holidays still have them off. Teacher work days are not "holidays" but are "teacher work days, no school for student" days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't the training be done during the religious holidays? No one celebrates ALL the holidays. Training/pd should be done on those days of your choosing. APS does not care about working families despite all their equity talk. The calendar proves it.

Because that would be working on a school holiday. Like working on Thanksgiving or MLK Jr day. Not everyone celebrates Presidents day, either.
I think they should have put them the Mon and Tue of Thanksgiving break week. Less disruptive to the routine of going to school. But I'm sure some teachers would complain that students and families get a week off for Thanksgiving travel but they can't do the same.

But APS doesn't have to designate these religious holidays as a school holiday, they could be teacher work days.

And for the teachers who DO observe a particular religious holiday? When do they get the training? If it's asynchronous online training they can do any time, then all teachers should just be required to do it whenever on any day (within their contract hours ) they want. If it's actual presentations and in-person, that's not realyl fair for the teachers who are observing the religious holiday.

[Anonymous]

Yes but that doesn’t change the number of teacher contract days to remove student days and we already have many extra days built in to the calendar so APS will still meet VDOE requirements at less than 180 days.

Fairfax and Loudon are both also making adjustments for this required training. APS is not unique in trying to make this work. And, the training is 27 hours so the added day isn’t going to fulfill it- they are likely going to dedicate many of the already scheduled ER days to this requirement. Which are only 2 days each. A full day off is about 7 hours of training time. Not many other days and times to do it. 27 hours is a lot of time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't the training be done during the religious holidays? No one celebrates ALL the holidays. Training/pd should be done on those days of your choosing. APS does not care about working families despite all their equity talk. The calendar proves it.

Because that would be working on a school holiday. Like working on Thanksgiving or MLK Jr day. Not everyone celebrates Presidents day, either.
I think they should have put them the Mon and Tue of Thanksgiving break week. Less disruptive to the routine of going to school. But I'm sure some teachers would complain that students and families get a week off for Thanksgiving travel but they can't do the same.

But APS doesn't have to designate these religious holidays as a school holiday, they could be teacher work days.

And for the teachers who DO observe a particular religious holiday? When do they get the training? If it's asynchronous online training they can do any time, then all teachers should just be required to do it whenever on any day (within their contract hours ) they want. If it's actual presentations and in-person, that's not realyl fair for the teachers who are observing the religious holiday.

Is the same teacher observing Rosh Hashanah, Diwali, and Eid al-Fitr? Seems unlikely, 2 out of the 3 could be workdays for any individual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't the training be done during the religious holidays? No one celebrates ALL the holidays. Training/pd should be done on those days of your choosing. APS does not care about working families despite all their equity talk. The calendar proves it.

Because that would be working on a school holiday. Like working on Thanksgiving or MLK Jr day. Not everyone celebrates Presidents day, either.
I think they should have put them the Mon and Tue of Thanksgiving break week. Less disruptive to the routine of going to school. But I'm sure some teachers would complain that students and families get a week off for Thanksgiving travel but they can't do the same.

But APS doesn't have to designate these religious holidays as a school holiday, they could be teacher work days.

And for the teachers who DO observe a particular religious holiday? When do they get the training? If it's asynchronous online training they can do any time, then all teachers should just be required to do it whenever on any day (within their contract hours ) they want. If it's actual presentations and in-person, that's not realyl fair for the teachers who are observing the religious holiday.

Is the same teacher observing Rosh Hashanah, Diwali, and Eid al-Fitr? Seems unlikely, 2 out of the 3 could be workdays for any individual.

You ignored the other part of the question.
Why are you fine with students who don't observe these religious holidays being off but not teachers?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't the training be done during the religious holidays? No one celebrates ALL the holidays. Training/pd should be done on those days of your choosing. APS does not care about working families despite all their equity talk. The calendar proves it.

Because that would be working on a school holiday. Like working on Thanksgiving or MLK Jr day. Not everyone celebrates Presidents day, either.
I think they should have put them the Mon and Tue of Thanksgiving break week. Less disruptive to the routine of going to school. But I'm sure some teachers would complain that students and families get a week off for Thanksgiving travel but they can't do the same.

But APS doesn't have to designate these religious holidays as a school holiday, they could be teacher work days.

And for the teachers who DO observe a particular religious holiday? When do they get the training? If it's asynchronous online training they can do any time, then all teachers should just be required to do it whenever on any day (within their contract hours ) they want. If it's actual presentations and in-person, that's not realyl fair for the teachers who are observing the religious holiday.

Is the same teacher observing Rosh Hashanah, Diwali, and Eid al-Fitr? Seems unlikely, 2 out of the 3 could be workdays for any individual.

You ignored the other part of the question.
Why are you fine with students who don't observe these religious holidays being off but not teachers?

I'm not? If you want those holidays to be regular school days for students I'm 100% in on that idea.

[Anonymous]

When does the school board post results of its discussion or vote on this issue? I looked at the APS landing page for the school board, but I don't see anything about updates or outcomes. Is that on school docs??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When does the school board post results of its discussion or vote on this issue? I looked at the APS landing page for the school board, but I don't see anything about updates or outcomes. Is that on school docs??

At Monday's SB meeting, the resolution passed 5-0. Teachers get their two extra PL days.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When does the school board post results of its discussion or vote on this issue? I looked at the APS landing page for the school board, but I don't see anything about updates or outcomes. Is that on school docs??

At Monday's SB meeting, the resolution passed 5-0. Teachers get their two extra PL days.

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Yep, official now. Where is everyone going to travel Nov 1-5?

[Anonymous]

APS' email only talks about the additional days off, not how they still come out to 180 student days. Does anyone know where the two days are coming from? Shorter winter break? Going longer in June?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:APS' email only talks about the additional days off, not how they still come out to 180 student days. Does anyone know where the two days are coming from? Shorter winter break? Going longer in June?

Using hours/snow days. No
Other changes to calendar

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:APS' email only talks about the additional days off, not how they still come out to 180 student days. Does anyone know where the two days are coming from? Shorter winter break? Going longer in June?

I mean they it doesn’t end up being 180 days, right? We were already way over the minimum on hours. Would have been great if these “extra” days off had eliminated that half week in June instead, but oh well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:APS' email only talks about the additional days off, not how they still come out to 180 student days. Does anyone know where the two days are coming from? Shorter winter break? Going longer in June?

I mean they it doesn’t end up being 180 days, right? We were already way over the minimum on hours. Would have been great if these “extra” days off had eliminated that half week in June instead, but oh well.

You can count by hours or days. APS has used hours in the past. APE screamed and yelled that they also needed to have 180 days, even though not required. This is why we now have a bunch of stupid half days where nothing happens. Just to shut APE up.