Reply to Melanie Meren's FB post about the calendar

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Other than people who just don’t seem to want to improve things, who is it that loses in a rational calendar year? Because for all the praise of “extra rest for high school students” I haven’t seen any advocacy for adding days off. Who are you all trying to save here?[/quote]
Everyone’s definition of a “rational calendar” is different. I for example consider the 25-26 calendar to be bad, but would call the 26-27 and 27-28 calendars rational. Others want calendars from a decade ago. There’s no scenario where everyone is happy. [/quote]

They could pass policies that keep some of the rational aspects of 26-27 and 27-28. They could end early release. What is the point of refusing to try to make things better?[/quote]

So the only reasons next school year and the year after that have decent calendars is because the various religious holidays fall at better times, on say Mondays or Fridays, or on weekends. Another “bad” calendar year like this year will definitely happen at some point in the not so distant future.

I’d like to see a policy around not necessarily “5 day weeks,” but more “absolute minimization of school days off from January-April.” Jan-March are the months we’re likely to have snow days messing up the calendar, then you get SB usually in April. These mid-year months are most critical for instruction so we can make sure that our kids are well-prepared for end of the year testing and that they’re learning enough with no gaps or rushing through their lessons.

It may mean that in some years, we can’t give off every federal holiday and every religious observance. It may mean that the staff development days (not the one teacher work day at the end of the quarter, which is important for getting in grades ) need to be moved to another point in the school year. It may mean making tough decisions about the length of [b]winter break, or spring break[/b]. Next year’s calendar happens to work out, but we may not be so lucky in the future. [/quote] You are right except with the winter break and spring break. Winter break should be two weeks and spring break while one week should stay in one spot and not always be the week before Easter.[/quote]

That describes this year pretty well. There were 2 federal holidays and the break for grading this year in Jan and Feb. Many years we have little to no snow, this year we were dumped on. March is always a bunch of 5 day weeks April is all five day weeks this year except half a week of spring break. The only holidays[/quote]

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