Reply to Explain ridiculously early 2023/24 start date?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Simply don’t understand it.  Raised in PA.  Started school the day after Labor Day, had Columbus and Veterans days off, Thanksgiving, Friday after Thanksgiving and the following Monday (first day of hunting season) off in the fall.   Two week break at Christmas, both Presidents birthdays in February, spring break week at Easter and out no later than June10th.

No teacher in service days, no days of at the end of the quarter, no CRT training, etc.  All teacher training, usually a week or less, done in August.

Worked fine then, could work now.  [/quote]

I grew up in PA to the same schedule.  But the problem is that there are a lot more people now who are other religions besides Christianity.  Many school districts have now added Jewish and Muslim holidays to the calendar or at least scheduled teacher professional days on those holidays.  Many districts have found that they have a high teacher-requested days off for Jewish or Muslim holidays from staff that observe those holidays.  And with a sub shortage, they often don't have sufficient coverage for those days.  They also have a lot of student approved-absenteeism on those days for families that observe them and they found that there was a lot of extra work to accommodate those students.  So, in many jurisdictions, it is easier to have those days off.  Even if they put a professional day, then a teacher taking a vacation day on the professional day does not require a substitute be acquired to fill the teacher's space.  The teacher then makes up the work at some other time, just like if she had to take off any other work day.

Also, unlike "back in the day" there are a lot more non-teaching requirements for teachers.  There are a lot more standardized tests, documentation that teachers have to write.  And grading and commenting via on-line tools like Canvas and other tools are more time-consuming that just hand-writing a grade on a form.  Plus there are many, many more IEPs and 504s (which were unheard of back in our day) and documenting and meeting for those individually takes up a lot more time.  With all of the extracurricular requirements on teachers, they need the professional days to meet those requirements.  I know many teachers who put in 20-30 hours per week outside of the classroom just to tread water and keep up with all of the external requirements put on teachers these days.  That didn't happen when we were kids.

So, the conditions are not the same as when we were kids.  So the old schedule doesn't work ay more.[/quote]

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