how do we get APS to rethink 13 snow days?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But wait, APS... that's CRAZY. VA law says you need to have kids in school 5.5 hours per day x 18- days. 180 x 5.5 = 990 hours, the required number of hours.

APS has kids in school 6 hours 50 minutes. That's way longer than 5 hours 30 minutes.

You should have way more than just 13 extra days. What am I missing here?

The time in school requirement instructional time and doesn't include passing time, recess, lunch, etc. it's only instructional time.

When I was a kid we had used too many snow days so my VA district cut 1 minute from the passing time between every class to meet the requirement. But then we were all just 1 minute late to our next class because the hallways were crowded and we couldn't change classes in 2.5 minutes. Just stupid.

That 5.5 hours includes everything (passing time, recess) except lunch.

VAC20-132-150. Standard school year and school day.
A. The standard school year shall be 180 instructional days or 990 instructional hours. The standard school day, including passing time for class changes and excluding breaks for meals, shall average a minimum of 5-1/2 instructional hours for students in kindergarten through grade 12. Recess may be included in the calculation of required instructional hours for elementary school, provided that recess does not exceed 15% of the required instructional hours.

B. All students in kindergarten through grade 12 shall maintain a full day schedule of classes (5-1/2 hours), unless a waiver is granted in accordance with policies defined by the local school board.

So OK, lunch is what - 30 minutes? So the school day needs to be at least 6 hours long, but APS makes it 6 hours 50 minutes. So 50 minutes more than the law requires x180days

Right that's what the APEs screamed for. More time in school. I think they view school as child care, also they don't seem to be able to handle their own kids at home. Remember OPEN SCHOOLS NOOOOW?!

Public school is public. Taxpayer funded. To educate kids. We just had 2 weeks off. Calendar shows another half day in January and then another 4 day weekend at end of the month. Not APE and my kids don't need 8 more days off. They need to be in school.

Why do you hate being around your kids?

Not this poster, but it isn’t about getting away from your kids. These kids would benefit from more instruction, not less.

I'm guessing the people complaining have younger kids. Wait until your kids get older, you'll see the value of days off. You don't know what you don't know now. Sit down, and sign your kids up for a camp. They will be fine, and you will too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Snow day just announced by APS for Monday 1/6.

10” means no school for a week.

This thread may age badly!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But wait, APS... that's CRAZY. VA law says you need to have kids in school 5.5 hours per day x 18- days. 180 x 5.5 = 990 hours, the required number of hours.

APS has kids in school 6 hours 50 minutes. That's way longer than 5 hours 30 minutes.

You should have way more than just 13 extra days. What am I missing here?

The time in school requirement instructional time and doesn't include passing time, recess, lunch, etc. it's only instructional time.

When I was a kid we had used too many snow days so my VA district cut 1 minute from the passing time between every class to meet the requirement. But then we were all just 1 minute late to our next class because the hallways were crowded and we couldn't change classes in 2.5 minutes. Just stupid.

That 5.5 hours includes everything (passing time, recess) except lunch.

VAC20-132-150. Standard school year and school day.
A. The standard school year shall be 180 instructional days or 990 instructional hours. The standard school day, including passing time for class changes and excluding breaks for meals, shall average a minimum of 5-1/2 instructional hours for students in kindergarten through grade 12. Recess may be included in the calculation of required instructional hours for elementary school, provided that recess does not exceed 15% of the required instructional hours.

B. All students in kindergarten through grade 12 shall maintain a full day schedule of classes (5-1/2 hours), unless a waiver is granted in accordance with policies defined by the local school board.

So OK, lunch is what - 30 minutes? So the school day needs to be at least 6 hours long, but APS makes it 6 hours 50 minutes. So 50 minutes more than the law requires x180days

Right that's what the APEs screamed for. More time in school. I think they view school as child care, also they don't seem to be able to handle their own kids at home. Remember OPEN SCHOOLS NOOOOW?!

Public school is public. Taxpayer funded. To educate kids. We just had 2 weeks off. Calendar shows another half day in January and then another 4 day weekend at end of the month. Not APE and my kids don't need 8 more days off. They need to be in school.

Why do you hate being around your kids?

Not this poster, but it isn’t about getting away from your kids. These kids would benefit from more instruction, not less.

I'm guessing the people complaining have younger kids. Wait until your kids get older, you'll see the value of days off. You don't know what you don't know now. Sit down, and sign your kids up for a camp. They will be fine, and you will too.

Sure a bit of respite is always appreciated, but they have interruptions at random days so much that some months there isn’t even a full week of instruction.

And yes, high school is hard because younger grades were inadequate preparation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Only the holidays that result in 50+% of students/teachers being absent should be included.

50% is way too high, but there should definitely be a consistent threshold (20%? Even 10%?). Send a survey, and only cancel school for religious holidays meeting the threshold. Should be both straightforward and fair.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Only the holidays that result in 50+% of students/teachers being absent should be included.

50% is way too high, but there should definitely be a consistent threshold (20%? Even 10%?). Send a survey, and only cancel school for religious holidays meeting the threshold. Should be both straightforward and fair.

10-20% is far too low for students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But wait, APS... that's CRAZY. VA law says you need to have kids in school 5.5 hours per day x 18- days. 180 x 5.5 = 990 hours, the required number of hours.

APS has kids in school 6 hours 50 minutes. That's way longer than 5 hours 30 minutes.

You should have way more than just 13 extra days. What am I missing here?

The time in school requirement instructional time and doesn't include passing time, recess, lunch, etc. it's only instructional time.

When I was a kid we had used too many snow days so my VA district cut 1 minute from the passing time between every class to meet the requirement. But then we were all just 1 minute late to our next class because the hallways were crowded and we couldn't change classes in 2.5 minutes. Just stupid.

That 5.5 hours includes everything (passing time, recess) except lunch.

VAC20-132-150. Standard school year and school day.
A. The standard school year shall be 180 instructional days or 990 instructional hours. The standard school day, including passing time for class changes and excluding breaks for meals, shall average a minimum of 5-1/2 instructional hours for students in kindergarten through grade 12. Recess may be included in the calculation of required instructional hours for elementary school, provided that recess does not exceed 15% of the required instructional hours.

B. All students in kindergarten through grade 12 shall maintain a full day schedule of classes (5-1/2 hours), unless a waiver is granted in accordance with policies defined by the local school board.

So OK, lunch is what - 30 minutes? So the school day needs to be at least 6 hours long, but APS makes it 6 hours 50 minutes. So 50 minutes more than the law requires x180days

Right that's what the APEs screamed for. More time in school. I think they view school as child care, also they don't seem to be able to handle their own kids at home. Remember OPEN SCHOOLS NOOOOW?!

Public school is public. Taxpayer funded. To educate kids. We just had 2 weeks off. Calendar shows another half day in January and then another 4 day weekend at end of the month. Not APE and my kids don't need 8 more days off. They need to be in school.

Why do you hate being around your kids?

Not this poster, but it isn’t about getting away from your kids. These kids would benefit from more instruction, not less.

I'm guessing the people complaining have younger kids. Wait until your kids get older, you'll see the value of days off. You don't know what you don't know now. Sit down, and sign your kids up for a camp. They will be fine, and you will too.

Sure a bit of respite is always appreciated, but they have interruptions at random days so much that some months there isn’t even a full week of instruction.

And yes, high school is hard because younger grades were inadequate preparation.

Oh come on, now you’re blaming your kids hard high school experience on …religious holidays?!? High school has been more than fine for my kids. How were yours not prepared?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But wait, APS... that's CRAZY. VA law says you need to have kids in school 5.5 hours per day x 18- days. 180 x 5.5 = 990 hours, the required number of hours.

APS has kids in school 6 hours 50 minutes. That's way longer than 5 hours 30 minutes.

You should have way more than just 13 extra days. What am I missing here?

The time in school requirement instructional time and doesn't include passing time, recess, lunch, etc. it's only instructional time.

When I was a kid we had used too many snow days so my VA district cut 1 minute from the passing time between every class to meet the requirement. But then we were all just 1 minute late to our next class because the hallways were crowded and we couldn't change classes in 2.5 minutes. Just stupid.

That 5.5 hours includes everything (passing time, recess) except lunch.

VAC20-132-150. Standard school year and school day.
A. The standard school year shall be 180 instructional days or 990 instructional hours. The standard school day, including passing time for class changes and excluding breaks for meals, shall average a minimum of 5-1/2 instructional hours for students in kindergarten through grade 12. Recess may be included in the calculation of required instructional hours for elementary school, provided that recess does not exceed 15% of the required instructional hours.

B. All students in kindergarten through grade 12 shall maintain a full day schedule of classes (5-1/2 hours), unless a waiver is granted in accordance with policies defined by the local school board.

So OK, lunch is what - 30 minutes? So the school day needs to be at least 6 hours long, but APS makes it 6 hours 50 minutes. So 50 minutes more than the law requires x180days

Right that's what the APEs screamed for. More time in school. I think they view school as child care, also they don't seem to be able to handle their own kids at home. Remember OPEN SCHOOLS NOOOOW?!

Public school is public. Taxpayer funded. To educate kids. We just had 2 weeks off. Calendar shows another half day in January and then another 4 day weekend at end of the month. Not APE and my kids don't need 8 more days off. They need to be in school.

Why do you hate being around your kids?

Not this poster, but it isn’t about getting away from your kids. These kids would benefit from more instruction, not less.

I'm guessing the people complaining have younger kids. Wait until your kids get older, you'll see the value of days off. You don't know what you don't know now. Sit down, and sign your kids up for a camp. They will be fine, and you will too.

Sure a bit of respite is always appreciated, but they have interruptions at random days so much that some months there isn’t even a full week of instruction.

And yes, high school is hard because younger grades were inadequate preparation.

Oh come on, now you’re blaming your kids hard high school experience on …religious holidays?!? High school has been more than fine for my kids. How were yours not prepared?

Not PP, but you seem like a real treat. (With a similar writing style to someone who is terribly annoying on AEM 😆).

Maybe high school is “more than fine” for your kids because APS has consistently lowered the expectations from its high school students. Compare the workload of a typical APS student to that of many private schoolers — especially writing output.

APS is, as another poster put it, government cheese.

But bravo for your kids for doing well in such a mediocre environment. ::slow clap::

[Anonymous]

You seem nice. Go enjoy the snow day if it’s not too triggering to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The 13 days come from the 990 minute requirement. They added 10 minutes to the school day to get the 13 days.

I've been trying to do the math on this (I think you made a typo - it's a 990 hour requirement right?)


How does 10 min extra each day add up to 13 "days" of school?

Is a student day considered to be 5.5 hours?

5.5 hours x 60 minutes = 330 minutes needed for one "school day"

to get 13 extra snow days therefore you'd need 13x330 minutes = 4290 minutes somehow extra.

OK so now to each 180 school days, tack on another 10 minutes. That gains you 180x10 =1800 extra minutes gained.

That's not even close to the 4290 minutes you need.

1800 minutes / 330 minutes needed for a school day = 5.45 school "days" not 13.

SO where/how did APS get the other 8 extra days?

Did they add MORE than 10 min per day? It would have had to be 23 minutes.

180 days x 23 minutes = 4140... pretty close to 13 days now.

Not exactly sure, but they were already using minutes for snow days for years before they added the extra 10 min. So they already had “extra” minutes built in. Then they added even more.

So they have extra hours built in that amounts to 13 built in “days”, but there are still 180 student days? If that’s the case there aren’t any extra days to eliminate. Is that correct?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The 13 days come from the 990 minute requirement. They added 10 minutes to the school day to get the 13 days.

I've been trying to do the math on this (I think you made a typo - it's a 990 hour requirement right?)


How does 10 min extra each day add up to 13 "days" of school?

Is a student day considered to be 5.5 hours?

5.5 hours x 60 minutes = 330 minutes needed for one "school day"

to get 13 extra snow days therefore you'd need 13x330 minutes = 4290 minutes somehow extra.

OK so now to each 180 school days, tack on another 10 minutes. That gains you 180x10 =1800 extra minutes gained.

That's not even close to the 4290 minutes you need.

1800 minutes / 330 minutes needed for a school day = 5.45 school "days" not 13.

SO where/how did APS get the other 8 extra days?

Did they add MORE than 10 min per day? It would have had to be 23 minutes.

180 days x 23 minutes = 4140... pretty close to 13 days now.

Not exactly sure, but they were already using minutes for snow days for years before they added the extra 10 min. So they already had “extra” minutes built in. Then they added even more.

So they have extra hours built in that amounts to 13 built in “days”, but there are still 180 student days? If that’s the case there aren’t any extra days to eliminate. Is that correct?

There are 178 days this year. APS cut two days for asynchronous teacher learning.

They have to hit the hour requirement or the number of days requirement, not both.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The 13 days come from the 990 minute requirement. They added 10 minutes to the school day to get the 13 days.

I've been trying to do the math on this (I think you made a typo - it's a 990 hour requirement right?)


How does 10 min extra each day add up to 13 "days" of school?

Is a student day considered to be 5.5 hours?

5.5 hours x 60 minutes = 330 minutes needed for one "school day"

to get 13 extra snow days therefore you'd need 13x330 minutes = 4290 minutes somehow extra.

OK so now to each 180 school days, tack on another 10 minutes. That gains you 180x10 =1800 extra minutes gained.

That's not even close to the 4290 minutes you need.

1800 minutes / 330 minutes needed for a school day = 5.45 school "days" not 13.

SO where/how did APS get the other 8 extra days?

Did they add MORE than 10 min per day? It would have had to be 23 minutes.

180 days x 23 minutes = 4140... pretty close to 13 days now.

Not exactly sure, but they were already using minutes for snow days for years before they added the extra 10 min. So they already had “extra” minutes built in. Then they added even more.

So they have extra hours built in that amounts to 13 built in “days”, but there are still 180 student days? If that’s the case there aren’t any extra days to eliminate. Is that correct?

There are 178 days this year. APS cut two days for asynchronous teacher learning.

They have to hit the hour requirement or the number of days requirement, not both.

Got it.
So there are no extra days. Nobody is going extra days to school or working extra days if snow days aren’t used.

[Anonymous]

APS closed Tuesday.

[Anonymous]

Where do you see this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where do you see this?

Nevermind, just got the text!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But wait, APS... that's CRAZY. VA law says you need to have kids in school 5.5 hours per day x 18- days. 180 x 5.5 = 990 hours, the required number of hours.

APS has kids in school 6 hours 50 minutes. That's way longer than 5 hours 30 minutes.

You should have way more than just 13 extra days. What am I missing here?

The time in school requirement instructional time and doesn't include passing time, recess, lunch, etc. it's only instructional time.

When I was a kid we had used too many snow days so my VA district cut 1 minute from the passing time between every class to meet the requirement. But then we were all just 1 minute late to our next class because the hallways were crowded and we couldn't change classes in 2.5 minutes. Just stupid.

That 5.5 hours includes everything (passing time, recess) except lunch.

VAC20-132-150. Standard school year and school day.
A. The standard school year shall be 180 instructional days or 990 instructional hours. The standard school day, including passing time for class changes and excluding breaks for meals, shall average a minimum of 5-1/2 instructional hours for students in kindergarten through grade 12. Recess may be included in the calculation of required instructional hours for elementary school, provided that recess does not exceed 15% of the required instructional hours.

B. All students in kindergarten through grade 12 shall maintain a full day schedule of classes (5-1/2 hours), unless a waiver is granted in accordance with policies defined by the local school board.

So OK, lunch is what - 30 minutes? So the school day needs to be at least 6 hours long, but APS makes it 6 hours 50 minutes. So 50 minutes more than the law requires x180days

Right that's what the APEs screamed for. More time in school. I think they view school as child care, also they don't seem to be able to handle their own kids at home. Remember OPEN SCHOOLS NOOOOW?!

Public school is public. Taxpayer funded. To educate kids. We just had 2 weeks off. Calendar shows another half day in January and then another 4 day weekend at end of the month. Not APE and my kids don't need 8 more days off. They need to be in school.

Why do you hate being around your kids?

Not this poster, but it isn’t about getting away from your kids. These kids would benefit from more instruction, not less.

I'm guessing the people complaining have younger kids. Wait until your kids get older, you'll see the value of days off. You don't know what you don't know now. Sit down, and sign your kids up for a camp. They will be fine, and you will too.

Sure a bit of respite is always appreciated, but they have interruptions at random days so much that some months there isn’t even a full week of instruction.

And yes, high school is hard because younger grades were inadequate preparation.

Oh come on, now you’re blaming your kids hard high school experience on …religious holidays?!? High school has been more than fine for my kids. How were yours not prepared?

Not PP, but you seem like a real treat. (With a similar writing style to someone who is terribly annoying on AEM 😆).

Maybe high school is “more than fine” for your kids because APS has consistently lowered the expectations from its high school students. Compare the workload of a typical APS student to that of many private schoolers — especially writing output.

APS is, as another poster put it, government cheese.

But bravo for your kids for doing well in such a mediocre environment. ::slow clap::

You didn't answer the question of how religious holidays make your kids unprepared for high school.

Also you spend WAY TOO MUCH time on social media.