Reply to MCPS extended through June 17

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I heard the waiver for the snow days was not approved so school will now be until Tuesday, June 17. Will Monday and Tuesday both be half days now?[/quote]

Howard County was denied roo. No surprise MCPS was also. I wish we would implement more half days as the last days. In MS and HS, the kids just want to use the last full days to run amok.[/quote]

With that attitude coming from their teachers, of course they are.

It's a pity we didn't use the far better make-up days that we had in the calendar. Taylor really screwed up here.[/quote]
It’s not Taylor’s fault. He has to work within the confines dictated by state law, staff employment contracts, and school board approval. He was hired into a situation where there were only two built-in snow days in the calendar and the dates named as potential make-up days for any additional closures were untenable for teachers. He didn’t make those decisions; he inherited them. We were unlikely to receive a waiver to avoid having to make up the last snow day, but there was no harm in asking for one. Since it wasn’t granted, he now has to decide which make-up day he will recommend to the school from a list of less-than-ideal options. Which stakeholders should he piss off?[/quote]

Except next year he's making the problem even worse by only building one snow day into the calendar. [/quote]
Is think he’s hamstrung by state law, employment contracts, and the school board’s historical expansion of days off coinciding with religious holidays. He can’t make the calendar work without starting school earlier or taking away a day off on a religious holiday or failing to build in snow days. I’d vote for starting school a week earlier, but by choosing to eliminate all but one snow day, he’s avoiding pissing off any one particular constituency or at least pissing off every constituency equally instead of picking just one. If he gets lucky and we have a mild winter, no one complains. I can’t blame the new guy for picking the path of least resistance.[/quote]

He took away a day to add a transition day that never existed before — kids who were transitioning to a new secondary school went to school for a half day the week before school started, and ES kids had an open house to meet their teacher. That came directly from him. He is moving in the wrong direction.[/quote]
The mistake here is that the transition day isn’t being counted as an instructional day, as it should be.[/quote]

No instruction will be taking place. And only some of the students will be invited to attend.[/quote]
There will be more instruction taking place on the transition day than on the last day of school, which they will count as an instructional day. It doesn’t matter that all students aren’t attending. We got to count instructional days when kindergartners didn’t attend because the kindergarten teachers were holding orientation for incoming kindergartners. We count instructional days when 5th and 8th graders have an all day cruise or picnic to celebrate their promotion. We count instructional days when seniors are finished, prior to their graduations. Everybody doesn’t have to be there.[/quote]

Apparently the state doesn’t agree with you. MCPS argued that it should count, and were turned down. [/quote]
I’d love to hear the state’s reasoning on counting the final (half) day of school as an instructional day. [/quote]

1) eveyrone is required to attend (even if they don't) 2) it includes lunch

The transition day would count if it was just a 1/2 day required for everyone. But it's not, so it doesn't. [/quote]

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