Reply to School Calendar 2023-2024

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][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.  I need the work days DURING the school year.  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 relentless crusade for more 5 days weeks 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]

I agree.  They are always speaking of supporting teachers, but giving those days at the end doesn't help grading during the year.  But honestly, no teacher will work all those days at the end.  [/quote]

I think those PW days are essentially comp time days for what teachers will need to do on their own time during the year.

PPs are right:  SB prioritized adding religious holidays.  Maybe teachers can use the religious holidays to get their work done???[/quote]

+1
And Megan was suggesting combining more TWDs with the holidays to address this. But if you are a teacher who does not celebrate the holiday you have off why not use just it for the grading / prep you need to do? [/quote]

Because that's the equivalent of telling me to just "work on a saturday".  I mean, yes, I will absolutely use that time to get work done because otherwise it doesn't get done, just like every weekend I grade for hours (and I actually took a sub day, today, using my own personal leave...to catch up on grading).

We are contracted to work 195 days.  Saying "just work on the religious days" makes it 210 days or whatever.  We aren't paid for that.  If you want to extend the contract to make those work days, then staff deserves to be compensated since the expectation is they are working more.[/quote]

To clarify, I'm find making them official TWDs (part of our contract that we are paid for), I'm not okay with them being a holiday for staff and students and just expecting staff to work anyway.[/quote]

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