Reply to School Calendar 2023-2024

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]The calendar is basically what we have now but they majorly screwed up with the teacher workdays.  The "fixed" the calendar at the expense of the teachers.  This is what they always do.  We bear the burden of all their bad decisions.

Teachers don't need 3 or 4 workdays at the end of the year.  There's nothing to do.  [b]I need the work days DURING the school year.[/b]  You know...when I have work to do.  We can't use those work days for planning for next year b/c a lot of us don't know what we're teaching next year.  We can't use them for our online trainings (I think the estimate is that it's about two days worth of watching videos for the yearly mandatory trainings) because they don't count for next year unless done after July 1.  We can't use them to grade papers, write IEPs, write narratives, write goals, update gradebooks, mark progress, etc because...we have no students at that point and the year is over.  All of that's been done already.  So the only thing left is for us to sit in more useless PD that no one asked for or needs.  We need unencumbered work time DURING the school year.  Period.  And the school board is oblivious to that because most of them have never taught a day in their lives.

This [b]relentless crusade for more 5 days weeks[/b] is exactly what another poster said...a direct response to the addition of the religious holidays.  The SB needs to man up and just call a tell these parents tough crap.  The religious days were added. It is was it is.  And the work days DURING the year are needed as well.  They should have balanced those out as best they could while not short changing either.  But instead, we get this mess. The fact that there were so many no votes + reluctant yeses should have been clue #1 that there was still work to be done.  [/quote]
Prelim-Disclosure: not in FCPS but watched the meeting anyway to see how other locales do things

I agree. [u]Teacher[/u] work days seem more appropriate during the year and, inherently, will 'chop' up a week. What I came to realize, mostly for myself and perhaps for others, wasn't so much that I want a 5-day week....but a "normal" week. Everyone knows the "work" week of Labor Day is only 4 days, that Thanksgiving is only 3- (or now 2-; I'm old enough to remember working the Friday after and have more than a few friends in retail who still 'work' it). And the week 'off' between Christmas and New Year's seems the norm. I would be more than OK with following Federal holidays (and maybe not even the birthdays or vet/memorial days) plus teacher workdays, esp at the end of a marking period. If you really want late-start, longish Winter Break, early end, it's got to be stripped down. Personally (and again, I'm not in FCPS), I prefer a bigger shift to more closely align with colleges (since they often make up the day-camp workforce): start mid-August, end in late May.

The real crux of it still seems to be the tug-of-war over religious observances which definitely are all over the place, calendar-wise. I can appreciate the concept of O-days, floating (individual) holidays, and/or liberal leave to cover those. Until the SB can settle that (and they may never come to a full agreement), calendars will continue to be problematic.[/quote]

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