Reply to Melanie Meren's FB post about the calendar

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Reply to "Melanie Meren's FB post about the calendar"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Sorry, love the non-5 day weeks. They are great. Summer is such a pain to plan, and we (and most of our friends) much prefer a day here and there, rather than additional weeks in the summer. [/quote]

Now that I have somewhat older children (taking SOL’s and trying to get into Algebra in 7th etc.) I am actually pretty concerned and anxious about the relative lack of instructional time they get compared to other districts that have more full weeks. Aren’t you concerned that your kids are behind and being short-changed?

I fear this will only get worse as my kids get older. I can supplement now with upper elementary kids. I can’t teach a HS junior AP Calc or AP French or high school level cello. The HS block scheduling makes this even worse. Missing “a day” is like missing two days in one class. It all adds up very quickly.[/quote]

They aren't getting less instructional time. It's just paced differently. In fact, in years that we don't use a lot of snow days (like last year), they actually get quite a bit more instructional time than surrounding districts. We build in enough hours to have something like 11 snow days. If they aren't used, that's bonus time. As opposed to, say Anne Arundel County, that only builds in 3-5 snow days. [/quote]

It’s not about the snow days really, we can’t control the weather. I wish they weren’t so quick to close though.

But just as an example: the AP Calc exam is given on May 11 this year. The district where I grew up has 173 school days for students. 160 are before the AP test - not counting Memorial Day where they have a 3 day weekend.

FCPS has 179 school days for students (counting O days and early release days as full days, which is being generous). 154 of those days are before May 11. Again this is not counting the massive 5 day weekend for Memorial Day. The point is other districts get in a full week or more of instructional time before state and AP testing in May. And where I grew up still did 2 full weeks at winter break this year, 3 days at Thanksgiving, and the same spring break as us and aligned with Easter. It just feels like we’re putting learning at a disadvantage with this calendar. It’s too many days off, too much playing catch-up. [/quote]

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