Reply to Will voting out the school board make the school calendar sane again?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]"longer" school year is made possible by lots of 4day weekends and days off for mental health, schoolwork, etc. and parents know years in advance for childcare. I truly don't see the reason for school board hatred, angst over this [/quote]

The hatred is because it’s disrespectful.

Whether it was intentional or not, you’re entirely wrong about “years in advance”. The early dismissals starting in ‘24 were announced weeks before they started. The new day of the week for this awful program was announced in May.  No one believes Reid or the board won’t make more changes to published calendars— fool us once, shame on you, fool us twice …

And so the hatred is because of the disrespect and sexism. FCPS’ casual assumption that women (its always women) couldn’t possibly have jobs so demanding that 39 days off PLUS early dismissals could possibly represent a hardship to the mothers they assume are home eating bonbons. And if they’re NOT sitting home surely they can fork out $1000 extra a month to cover childcare so teachers can “plan”. Meanwhile, no matter how long you know in advance no job is handing most workers 39 days off between September and June.

FCPS is going to need to answer to their constituents.  Board members know people are angry. [/quote]

I get that the early release days have caused frustration, but [b]FCPS actually did announce the switch from Mondays to Wednesdays back in May for an August start.[/b] That’s several months of notice. And since schools are providing supervised care and transportation for students who need to stay until the regular dismissal time, families aren’t left scrambling for childcare on those days.

But I don’t think the intent was to disregard families or assume anything about working parents. FCPS is trying to balance instructional needs and teacher planning time, all while managing staffing and scheduling constraints. It’s not perfect, but this feels more like competing priorities than disrespect or sexism. Constructive feedback really does make a difference, especially when it comes from parents who want to help shape solutions.[/quote]

Right— thats not “years”. Neither was announcing the beginning of these early release days after the end of the school year “years” of notice— particularly after releasing a calendar that bragged about the number of five-day weeks.  Compounding that, the justification for the days was blamed on Richmond and announced as a one-year fix. No one has yet taken responsibility for that lie, which again, is why working parents feel so profoundly disrespected: we were lied to.

I’m interested in your perspective that it “feels” more like competing priorities than disrespect or sexism. Feels to whom? Because its not a secret in Fairfax or anywhere else that women do most of the childcare, so when FCPS put out instructions to drop everything and get your kid at 12, who is it you “felt” they were talking to? And if they didn’t consider the disparate impact of that decision, they would be acting against established best practices. 
[/quote]

If you can’t get it together between May and August, it’s a You Problem.[/quote]

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