Who is N?ick Minock

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Decouple Spring break from Easter. Work with the other counties to set a specific week and set that as spring break every year. Maybe the second or third week or March. Some years it will coincide with Easter but most years it won’t and that is fine.

Christmas will fall during the winter break but it is a Federal Holiday any way.

The year they did that so many staff took off for Good Friday they had to pull in central office staff to sub. So they would need to recognize that as a religious holiday. Easier to just have it spring break.

Weird, I was raised Catholic in Massachusetts. We had school on Good Friday and went to mass after school. So did all of our Catholic, which was the vast majority of our school, classmates and teachers. Nothing says that you have to take Good Friday off or celebrate at a specific time. More likely people were using that as an excuse to travel.

We have family and friends in Chicago, LA, Boston, Milwaukee, Omaha and a host of other cities/towns. None of them have their Spring Break tied to Easter and all of them have school on Good Friday. This area is weird in that spring break is tied to Easter.

[Anonymous]

You guys are totally missing the point. Mom and dad simply want their kids to go to school when they go to work. How hard is that for non parents to understand?? Why do parents need a baby sitter or make other arrangements for their kids so often?? Most parents prefer the old fashioned school calendar from 20 years ago! Again. Why can't kids go to school when parents go to work??

[Anonymous]

we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

When have we had three weeks off. It is usually two.

And, good grief, my non-Christian Indian neighbors put up a Christmas tree. It has also become am American cultural holiday.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

Why do we need so many 3 and 4 day weeks in the school year?? All parents want is for kids to go to school 5 day a week!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

Please name a single year that we have had a planned? three-week winter break. Snow days dont count, for that is not a planned vacation.

A huge number of people, teachers included, in Fairfax travel to see family for Christmas, so having a long enough break for travel is important.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

Why do we need so many 3 and 4 day weeks in the school year?? All parents want is for kids to go to school 5 day a week!

Not all

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

Why do we need so many 3 and 4 day weeks in the school year?? All parents want is for kids to go to school 5 day a week!

Not all

Why do you want to make life so hard for hard working duel income households??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

Why do we need so many 3 and 4 day weeks in the school year?? All parents want is for kids to go to school 5 day a week!

Not all

Why do you want to make life so hard for hard working duel income households??

Dual income working family here—because I believe it’s better for my kids to have breaks throughout the year, not a 3 month summer. Ideally it would be long weekends or week long breaks vs Tuesday holidays, but I’ll take Tuesdays over extended summers.

Everyone wants what works best for their own kids. All of our kids are different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Decouple Spring break from Easter. Work with the other counties to set a specific week and set that as spring break every year. Maybe the second or third week or March. Some years it will coincide with Easter but most years it won’t and that is fine.

Christmas will fall during the winter break but it is a Federal Holiday any way.

The year they did that so many staff took off for Good Friday they had to pull in central office staff to sub. So they would need to recognize that as a religious holiday. Easier to just have it spring break.

Weird, I was raised Catholic in Massachusetts. We had school on Good Friday and went to mass after school. So did all of our Catholic, which was the vast majority of our school, classmates and teachers. Nothing says that you have to take Good Friday off or celebrate at a specific time. More likely people were using that as an excuse to travel.

We have family and friends in Chicago, LA, Boston, Milwaukee, Omaha and a host of other cities/towns. None of them have their Spring Break tied to Easter and all of them have school on Good Friday. This area is weird in that spring break is tied to Easter.

Arlington diocese schools have off on Good Friday and the vast majority of parishes now do their services at 3:00 and not in the evening.

It doesn’t have to be a day off but if it’s not a lot of staff will use religious leave to take it off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

Why do we need so many 3 and 4 day weeks in the school year?? All parents want is for kids to go to school 5 day a week!

Not all

Why do you want to make life so hard for hard working duel income households??

Dual income working family here—because I believe it’s better for my kids to have breaks throughout the year, not a 3 month summer. Ideally it would be long weekends or week long breaks vs Tuesday holidays, but I’ll take Tuesdays over extended summers.

Everyone wants what works best for their own kids. All of our kids are different.

How will your kids deal with college?? Lots of 5 day weeks with a ton of homework. How are 3 and 4 day weeks without lots of homework setting them up for success??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

Why do we need so many 3 and 4 day weeks in the school year?? All parents want is for kids to go to school 5 day a week!

Not all

Why do you want to make life so hard for hard working duel income households??

Dual income working family here—because I believe it’s better for my kids to have breaks throughout the year, not a 3 month summer. Ideally it would be long weekends or week long breaks vs Tuesday holidays, but I’ll take Tuesdays over extended summers.

Everyone wants what works best for their own kids. All of our kids are different.

sc

As a former teacher, consistency is key. It really messes up elementary school schedules. While I enjoyed the random day of or teacher workday, it is not the best for teaching.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

Why do we need so many 3 and 4 day weeks in the school year?? All parents want is for kids to go to school 5 day a week!

Not all

Why do you want to make life so hard for hard working duel income households??

Dual income working family here—because I believe it’s better for my kids to have breaks throughout the year, not a 3 month summer. Ideally it would be long weekends or week long breaks vs Tuesday holidays, but I’ll take Tuesdays over extended summers.

Everyone wants what works best for their own kids. All of our kids are different.

sc

As a former teacher, consistency is key. It really messes up elementary school schedules. While I enjoyed the random day of or teacher workday, it is not the best for teaching.

Curent teachers hate the 3 and 4 day weeks also.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Christmas is a federal holiday (one of the original federal holidays)

Christmas should have been listed with the other federal holidays, but FCPS wanted to skew the survey results so they separated Christmas from the federal holidays and moved it to the religious holidays.

FCPS knows Christmas is a federal holiday.

FCPS knows that more than 80-90% of the students celebrate Christmas, either religiously or secularly, and likely more than 95% of teachers and school staff celebrate Christmas, so there would be no adults in the building and barely any students in the building if FCPS were to hold school on Christmas Eve and Christmas just to make a point.

It was petty and dishonest of FCPS to remove Christmas from the Federal holiday list, just to try to put their thumbs on the survey results.

If FCPS created an honest survey, Christmas would have been on the federal holiday list and Ash Wednesday & the two Orthodox holidays would have been listed with the religious holidays, as well as decoupling Easter from spring break.

FCPS knows A) Christmas is a federal holiday and B) such a significant majority of FCPS families, teachers, administrators and staff celebrate Christmas that schools cannot function on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Knowing these truths, FCPS was being completely dishonest and manipulative with their survey wording removing Christmas from federal holidays.

The only reasons to do this is to influence the survey results, and to create discord in minority religious groups if other religious holidays are removed and Christmas stays because it must stay due to logistics.

Nick Minok is an investigative reporter who focuses on the stupidity and waste of FCPS. Yes, he appears to be right wing, but your question should be why don't any of the many left wing reporters ever care to deep dive into the waste and stupidity of FCPS, holding them to account as well.

Universally, parents, admin and teachers in fcps agree that this year's pandering calendar was a disaster.

With very few exceptions, anyone with a basic grasp of American civics and culture knows that FCPS removing Christmas from the federal holliday list was completely dishonest, had dishonorable ulterior motives to manipulate survey results, will not be possible or practical due to the sheer numbers of families and staff that celebrate Christmas, and will cause much more hurt in the long run for minority groups if the other religious holidays are removed and Christmas stays.

Christmas has to stay on the calendar. FCPS knows that it cannot be removed. The schools will be empty that week, there will be no teachers to teach, and the district will lose a huge chunk of funding

Removing Christmas from the federal holiday list was dishonest, petty, and mean. It was especially mean to those minority students who don't realize that Christmas is a federal holiday, what a federal holiday means, and how schools are staffed and funded. They are only going to see it as a slight to them, because they don't understand the facts around Christmas as a federal holiday, and school funding formulas. Shame on FCPS.

FCPS should get called out for their dishonesty. More local reporters than Nick Minoc should be taking FCPS to task for this dishonest and misleading survey.

WHAT? Also recently up for review was having school during federal holidays- so, yeah those two things are separated. The WHAT ABOUT THE CALENDAR contingent wanted fewer federal holidays to be school holidays, you all said this. That you are saying Christmas is religious and federal doesn’t help your argument at ALL. You are weakening your argument and basically just saying you want what you want when you want it (those wants mostly around what you experienced as a kid BTW) and that everything else has no actual rules around it.

This is not a valid argument.

Christmas being a federal holiday and a holiday celebrated by nearly all of the adult staff and teachers in FCPS and at least 80-90% of students means that FCPS cannot hold school on Christmas or Christmas Eve.

They would not have enough people to run schools.

Perhaps the 12 school board members plus the 24 additional staff they hired this past school year would be enough to supervise the handful of kids attending school on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, so the teachers, principals and staff who celebrate Christmas can have those days off.

It's a win/win.

The school board gets to ignore the fact that Christmas is a federal holiday and work those days to cover this federal holiday for the teachers, staff and principals, the parents who are arguing for school on Christmas can send their kids to sit with a few other kids, and everyone else can take the federal holiday off to celebrate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:we don't need 3 weeks off as "Christmas break." Federal holiday is literally one day

When have we had three weeks off. It is usually two.

And, good grief, my non-Christian Indian neighbors put up a Christmas tree. It has also become am American cultural holiday.

My middle eastern muslim hairdresser also celebrates Christmas. He said Christmas is big in his muslim home country, even for non Christians