How to fit school days into Gov Larry Hogan's ridiculous policy on school start and stop dates

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Sorry but its not ridiculous. We grew up in the midwest with harsh winters thus the occasional snow day and school started after labor day. The fix us the teachers and administrators dont need so many admin days.

I agree. The only thing that is ridiculous is that the BOE will never stop whining to the state and cry to public about "oh no, what should we do?" about every little thing. Just DO YOUR JOBS and get a calendar in place for next year. I honestly don't give a crap what days are off or not so long as we keep the summer long and the constant 3-4 day school weeks to a minimum. If I need to celebrate a holiday or take a vacation, my kids won't be in school those days. They have survived before and will survive next year too. And yes, I have a high schooler. It doesn't matter. Just make the f'ing calendar already.

This. I don't understand what the issue is here. I don't remember ever getting an email like this before bout planning the school calendar. Even those years when/after we used up the snow days. Why does this justify an email to every parent but the sexual predator incident at Richard Montgomery HS was not addressed by email??

Just set the calendar and move the f along.

They most likely already have an idea of what it's going to be but this way they can say they asked for input before the decision was made and that will be like they'll use when people inevitably are unhappy with the outcome. This kind of crap happens in schools all the time.

[Anonymous]

^^"that will be the line they'll use"

[Anonymous]

Teachers do not get paid in summer in MoCo

Teachers DO work more than 8 hours a day / every day

If parking lots are empty on teacher work days, that is because the union negotiated that teachers be able to work from home on those days- not because they are not working

Having all teacher planning and professional development occur in summer would be ineffective. You can't anticipate in August the changes you need to make to your lesson plans in February... planning time, collaboration with colleagues, using data from current students to drive the next unit- teachers need time periodically to reflect and plan.

School is not daycare

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At one point, there was discussion about the idea that the governor couldn't legally do this by executive order. What happened to that?

In the meantime, I'm certainly going to remind my elected state representatives that I think this should be a priority for the General Assembly.

I'll be telling my reps to support the governor on this smart, sensible, efficient policy or they wont get my support. The school board is arrogantly political and ive had enough. Their politicking had politicized me to to vote for new board members who actually care about education. Not party politics or wasting our money on stupid stuff.[b]

This +100

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this a ridiculous policy? I do 't get it.

Personally we love the longer summer. If you don't like it, then put your kid in an academic camp or something. It's nice to have that long break.

We always started after Labor Day when I was growing up in NY.

Yes, we did start after Labor Day, but we also ended a lot later than June 15th.
They need the extra time to fit it all in.

Wrong. We ended in the mid to late teens every year. Never in the 20's. We also didn't have religious days and teacher days so 180 was easy to get to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Teachers do not get paid in summer in MoCo

Teachers DO work more than 8 hours a day / every day

If parking lots are empty on teacher work days, that is because the union negotiated that teachers be able to work from home on those days- not because they are not working

Having all teacher planning and professional development occur in summer would be ineffective. You can't anticipate in August the changes you need to make to your lesson plans in February... planning time, collaboration with colleagues, using data from current students to drive the next unit- teachers need time periodically to reflect and plan.

School is not daycare

Teachers have the week between Christmas and New Years and the week of Spring break to have professional in service days in addition to summer. There are 261 non-weekend days in a year. Most of us get 10 federal holidays a year and do not get a week off at Christmas and a week off in March. Accounting for the 9 federal holidays (July 4 is not in teh school year), that leaves 252 weekdays a year. Take off 180 days for school and there are still 71 week days. The teachers can have their professional days on those 71 week days. That's typically 5 days at Christmas, 5 days for Spring break and 61 days spread across the summer. They need to handle their in-service days on those days. And if the issue is the pay, then the union needs to negotiate an appropriate payment level to compensate the teachers. However, that is a discussion outside the scheduling of the school year. There are 185 days between 4 Sep 2018 and 14 Jun 2019 that are not any of the federal holidays, the week between Christmas and New Year and one week for spring break. There should not be a problem fitting in 180 days of school. There's even some leeway if you need snow days (up to 5).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this a ridiculous policy? I do 't get it.

Personally we love the longer summer. If you don't like it, then put your kid in an academic camp or something. It's nice to have that long break.

We always started after Labor Day when I was growing up in NY.

Yes, we did start after Labor Day, but we also ended a lot later than June 15th.
They need the extra time to fit it all in.

but then you can't force parents to spend extra. We might as well close the schools all year, think about the revenue it's going to generate!

Right! We must have the proper priorities!

Though Hogan won't have a lot of success attracting businesses to a state that considers its tourism sector (which is actually not such a big sector of the state economy) to be more important than its schools.

Are you just an idiot liberal who thinks money goes on trees to pay for all these kids to go to school. You welcome all the poor illegal aliens who are sharply increasing our school budget and not contributing to any taxes towards it. All the kids in poverty. Their parents don't have to pay much or any taxes st all and they have the highest needs. So you are bitching about 1 freaking week longer in summer like it is the end of the world. It is estimating to bring in millions more to our economy and help many business owners, which also helps to keep the taxes rolling in from small businesses. Something has to give.

You bitch Hogan doesn't give us enough money for education but then bitch Hogan is finding ways to increase money to education. The kids still go to school the same amount of days. Calm the f down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Teachers do not get paid in summer in MoCo

Teachers DO work more than 8 hours a day / every day

If parking lots are empty on teacher work days, that is because the union negotiated that teachers be able to work from home on those days- not because they are not working

Having all teacher planning and professional development occur in summer would be ineffective. You can't anticipate in August the changes you need to make to your lesson plans in February... planning time, collaboration with colleagues, using data from current students to drive the next unit- teachers need time periodically to reflect and plan.

School is not daycare

Teachers have the week between Christmas and New Years and the week of Spring break to have professional in service days in addition to summer. There are 261 non-weekend days in a year. Most of us get 10 federal holidays a year and do not get a week off at Christmas and a week off in March. Accounting for the 9 federal holidays (July 4 is not in teh school year), that leaves 252 weekdays a year. Take off 180 days for school and there are still 71 week days. The teachers can have their professional days on those 71 week days. That's typically 5 days at Christmas, 5 days for Spring break and 61 days spread across the summer. They need to handle their in-service days on those days. And if the issue is the pay, then the union needs to negotiate an appropriate payment level to compensate the teachers. However, that is a discussion outside the scheduling of the school year. There are 185 days between 4 Sep 2018 and 14 Jun 2019 that are not any of the federal holidays, the week between Christmas and New Year and one week for spring break. There should not be a problem fitting in 180 days of school. There's even some leeway if you need snow days (up to 5).

Other federal holidays are not given as days off for teachers actually, such as Columbus Day. There are actually not 5 days for Christmas. You already counted Christmas as a day off in your "10 federal holidays." Please do not double count days. You also have double counted New Years Day in your federal holidays. Please do not double count. There are actually 4 days off for winter break that are not double counted. You miscounted what days off there are for spring break also. The Friday before and Monday after are BY LAW required to be days off and cannot be professional days. That means there are actually only 8 usable days for spring and winter breaks. Are you suggesting that ALL EIGHT be used for professional days?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this a ridiculous policy? I do 't get it.

Personally we love the longer summer. If you don't like it, then put your kid in an academic camp or something. It's nice to have that long break.

We always started after Labor Day when I was growing up in NY.

Because it's bad for kids' education to be out of school that long -- especially poor kids. Whose parents are not going to put them in an academic camp or something.

Oh, please. It's been discussed on here before. MCPS offers educational opportunities for poor/lower income students over the summer. Plus free meals at churches/some schools. It's perfectly fine for their (and all kids') education to have a little bit of a break.

Spoken like someone for whom paying for an extra week of summer camp/day care is no big deal. Must be nice.

[Anonymous]

I think 8 weeks of summer break are more than enough. We take 2 weeks vacation and six weeks of camp. My kids get sick of camp and look forward to getting back to school. Hogan is nuts! We vacationed at Cape Cod this year to protest Hogan’s mandate. No way am I giving Ocean City money for this idiocy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think 8 weeks of summer break are more than enough. We take 2 weeks vacation and six weeks of camp. My kids get sick of camp and look forward to getting back to school. Hogan is nuts! We vacationed at Cape Cod this year to protest Hogan’s mandate. No way am I giving Ocean City money for this idiocy.

OC is for underage drinking

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think 8 weeks of summer break are more than enough. We take 2 weeks vacation and six weeks of camp. My kids get sick of camp and look forward to getting back to school. Hogan is nuts! We vacationed at Cape Cod this year to protest Hogan’s mandate. No way am I giving Ocean City money for this idiocy.

While there may be a number of Montgomery County folks who protest by going elsewhere, the fact is that OC, Baltimore and Annapolis had far busier weeks that were more like typical summer days instead of school year days. Many people from out of state came (the Washington Post interviewed families from NC and elsewhere that came to the Eastern shore because they heard of the extended summer week) there as well. And while you may protest, there only need to be a few thousand families from the eastern seaboard coming to MD for the "last week of summer" for it to be a financially successful decision and by all reports to date, it has been.

But the real point is that even in Montgomery County, polls show about 60% of residents approved of the decision (as opposed to about 75% elsewhere in the state). The decision was popular state-wide except by a small portion of Montgomery County, mostly the rich W school population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this a ridiculous policy? I do 't get it.

Personally we love the longer summer. If you don't like it, then put your kid in an academic camp or something. It's nice to have that long break.

We always started after Labor Day when I was growing up in NY.

Yes, we did start after Labor Day, but we also ended a lot later than June 15th.
They need the extra time to fit it all in.

Wrong. We ended in the mid to late teens every year. Never in the 20's. We also didn't have religious days and teacher days so 180 was easy to get to.

You didn't grow up where I did...NYC. We had religious days and finished late June. They still do. So, no I'm not wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think 8 weeks of summer break are more than enough. We take 2 weeks vacation and six weeks of camp. My kids get sick of camp and look forward to getting back to school. Hogan is nuts! We vacationed at Cape Cod this year to protest Hogan’s mandate. No way am I giving Ocean City money for this idiocy.

While there may be a number of Montgomery County folks who protest by going elsewhere, the fact is that OC, Baltimore and Annapolis had far busier weeks that were more like typical summer days instead of school year days. Many people from out of state came (the Washington Post interviewed families from NC and elsewhere that came to the Eastern shore because they heard of the extended summer week) there as well. And while you may protest, there only need to be a few thousand families from the eastern seaboard coming to MD for the "last week of summer" for it to be a financially successful decision and by all reports to date, it has been.

But the real point is that even in Montgomery County, polls show about 60% of residents approved of the decision (as opposed to about 75% elsewhere in the state). The decision was popular state-wide except by a small portion of Montgomery County, mostly the rich W school population.

Hey... I resemble that remark. Seriously our children go to a 'rich' W school and we love Hogan's decision. But we are not the partisan hacks like many others here.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think 8 weeks of summer break are more than enough. We take 2 weeks vacation and six weeks of camp. My kids get sick of camp and look forward to getting back to school. Hogan is nuts! We vacationed at Cape Cod this year to protest Hogan’s mandate. No way am I giving Ocean City money for this idiocy.

You do what works for your family, but it seems silly to protest by going to Cape Cod.

FWIW, we did vacation in Ocean City this year that last week in August. Not everyone has to vacation in OC to make it worthwhile. But I’d guess that there were more people there this year than in past summers when school was in session. I’m sure that helps the economy more than some random days off during the year.