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]Here is a straightforward calendar from a state/metropolitan area with a diverse population https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1756930407/mplsk12mnus/ge5clwh0shgydwvthwbs/SYCalendar-English-2026-27.pdf

Put it out there and if people don’t like it there is always private school, home school, or excused absences.

[/quote]
Read the fine print. That calendar is 168 instructional days. FCPS schedules 179-180. FCPS could get away with scheduling fewer days, as they only need 165-ish to meet the 990 requirement, but then we’d be tacking days at the end of the year to makeup snow days. [/quote]

We schedule a lot of snow days due to one really harsh winter back in I think 2009-2010. We usually don’t need that many. Even this year, a bad winter, they used 4 snow days + I think 6-7 2 hour delays, so roughly 6 days total. Many districts in the north budget 5 snow days before needing to extend the calendar or cut into spring break. With the fact that we usually start earlier than Minneapolis (before Labor Day) it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to extend the school year by a day or two at the end if needed. [/quote]
Between Labor Day and the end of the school year, Minneapolis has nearly the same number of holidays and teacher work days as FCPS for the 2026-27 school year. 31 vs 32 days. FCPS goes on longer because they schedule 180 days rather than 168. That’s the difference. [/quote]

“Between labor day” does a lot of work when school starts in the second week of September. [/quote]
FCPS schedules 179-180 instructional days. Minneapolis schedules 168. Please take the Minneapolis calendar and add 12 days to it. 10 days from August 24-Sept 4 (assuming they don’t have to close the Friday before Labor Day) and then the remaining 2 days you can tack onto the end. Now compare it to the FCPS calendar for 2026-27 school year. They’d end 2 days before us.

[b]The issue has less to do with religious holidays and more to do with Virginia’s requirement of 180 days or 990 instructional hours. FCPS uses hours but still schedules for meeting 180 days. [/b][/quote]

The Minneapolis calendar offers far more 5 day weeks and without a slew of early release days it is possible to fit 990 instructional hours in a 168 day calendar.  [/quote]

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