Reply to The response to MoCo's calendar change shows why the FCPS religious holidays will never go away

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Reply to "The response to MoCo's calendar change shows why the FCPS religious holidays will never go away"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]So you remove Federal Holidays, which are about the same in number as the religious holidays. Fixed. [/b]

And you uncouple Spring Break from Easter as a bonus, providing an annual date for Spring Break that doesn't move.

People can complain all they want that Christmas falls in Winter Break but it is a federal holiday and has been a time period for travel across the country for forever. Schools would be shut due to lack of attendance and teachers and staff if it wasn't off. There are no other holidays were that would be the case.[/quote]

There are 11 federal holidays:

- Independence Day and Juneteenth fall outside of the school year.
- Labor Day (plus the Friday) is mandated by VA law.
- [b]Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years are untouchable, and I'd argue Memorial Day also.[/b]
- Columbus is already used as a teacher workday.
- So, only MLK, Presidents, and Veterans Days are viable school days.

Of the surrounding districts (Arl, Falls Church City, Prince William, Loudoun), the only one that has school on any of those three days is Loudoun for Veterans Day.[/quote]

Thanksgiving doesn’t require 3 days. Make the Weds or the Fri a teacher work day.

Christmas does not require two weeks. Make 23rd a teacher work/training day.

Memorial Day does not require three days. Make one a work day.

Teacher should be allowed to work remotely on their workdays and training should be available online.

There, got rid of three days off and didn’t upset anybody/disenfranchise any religion.[/quote]
Majority of the TW are timed around the end of a quarter. Nit picking a few days off the calendar isn’t going to fix that. It would be more effective to time quarters around existing breaks. For example, Monday and Tuesday of Spring Break could have been TW/SD days instead of tracking them onto the following week. [/quote]

Looking at FCPS calendar, the pattern seems to be that there is a TW day at the end of each quarter (presumably for grading, and finalizing the gradebook) and 1 TW and one SD or SP day during each quarter, allowing for teachers to plan.

You could move those days to non-religious holiday days, I guess, but it wouldn't change the fact that teachers need days to plan, and that those days need to be distributed throughout the quarter, not clustered.  If this doesn't seem obvious to you, I'd ask you this.  How does it work in your job?  When you have time when your client isn't present.  Perhaps you're creating documents, reviewing documents, or meeting with colleagues.  Are those kinds of tasks clustered, or do you have time to do that every single month that you work?  Are you asked to do things in illogical sequence, or do you generally get to gather data before you analyze it?  Or plan meetings with clients after you already held the meetings?  Because that is what people seem to think teachers should do.

[/quote]

They can be distributed through the quarter without adding more holes to the calendar. Indigenous peoples day is a great example. [/quote]

Indigenous people day is a great example of what?   [/quote]

Using the calendar to provide TW days on days students are already out of the classroom, not adding more disruption.[/quote]

What day in late February are you proposing be used in that way?

Also, do you work federal holidays, or are you just expecting that teachers do so?[/quote]

I worked Federal Holidays when I didn’t support the Fed Govetrnment. Most people aroind the country work on Federal Holidays, except for the big ones, labor day, memorial day, fourth of July, and Thanksgiving. You could even argue that a large percentage of the country works on Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years Eve. So yes, Teachers can work on federal holidays, they do in other counties in Virginia and across the US.

Our area is a bit different because so many people work for the Federal Government or support the Federal Government that a lrge percentage of population have the day off. [/quote]

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