Anonymous wrote:They keep failing, pp, because they don’t care. Anyone who has had to deal with the pgcps administration about almost any issue gets to experience this first hand. There is no accountability, and that’s a problem.

I know there are a lot of bitter longtime parents on here, and I may be one some day, but in my limited experience so far, the administration has been exceedingly helpful when I've had issues. It's the board that sucks (at least my bird member, dinora Hernandez. Has never once acknowledged any of my calls or emails).

Is it the board of ed or administration that initiates the calendar process?

Anonymous wrote:Last year they were late because they tried to get a waiver from hogans stupid edict and it wasn't granted. They are probably going to try and fail again. I don't like this year's because there aren't enough random days off, thus proving once again that you can't please everyone.

That's not why they were late last year. They had already applied for and were denied a waiver to hogan's calendar, which applies to *this* school year, not retroactively to last year. They applied for a waiver for the 180 day requirement because, in spite of having extremely few snow days last year, we still somehow needed to eat into our reserve of make up days, which were not well-communicated as being potentially added on to the school year, and therefore came as a random surprise to parents. In Montgomery, for instance, hey just have a 184-day school year so there is never any confusion about when the last day of school will be.

I'm not concerned about the sheer number of random days, which, like you, I prefer a longer school year with more breaks throughout. It's the placement of the days which are super random and pay no consideration to families, and are spaced out so randomly you can't even make a long weekend out of them. For instance, why do we have a half day on the 30th AND the 3rd and get Veterans Day off? Who has Veterans Day off anymore? Why not convert that to a professional day instead of two pointless half days in the same week? Why is the half day on the 30th and not the 31st so kids have time to complete their homework on Halloween? There are all kinds of examples like this.

Last year they were late because they tried to get a waiver from hogans stupid edict and it wasn't granted. They are probably going to try and fail again. I don't like this year's because there aren't enough random days off, thus proving once again that you can't please everyone.

They keep failing, pp, because they don’t care. Anyone who has had to deal with the pgcps administration about almost any issue gets to experience this first hand. There is no accountability, and that’s a problem.

I'm not here to debate the merits of Hogan's new start dates...there's another thread for that...
But in reading this Washington post article this morning, I am surprised (or not) to see that PG county is once again behind in planning their 2018-2019 school calendar.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-calendar-squeeze-a-shorter-school-year-school-on-jewish-holidays/2017/10/09/0edb5bdc-a9f5-11e7-850e-2bdd1236be5d_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_calendar-705pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.34138d9d0db5#comments

Every other major county in the region seems to either already have draft calendars for comment or are actively working on them for release soon. PG? Not even starting the process until "late October." Montgomery and other counties seem to also have a very open, transparent and participatory process for soliciting feedback from families.
After this pst year, when PG extended the school year and announced it in, what, MAY!? And got a lot of flack for it...you'd think they would have learned their lesson? Why do they continue to fail at this?
I hate the school calendar this year. In spite of being forced to compress things, there are still so many random days off that aren't well coordinated with actual holidays or long weekends which would reduce the hardship on families. When the county purports to want to help the many high needs students in this county- they simply can't continue to have it both ways- a calendar that doesn't attempt to minimize disruption and hardship on working families while expecting higher performance.