Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our school indicated early dismissal, not alternative plans.

Our school hasn’t indicated alternative plans either.

FCPS being FCPS!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just got an email from my kids' elementary school about early release. The text explicitly says that students will dismiss at 12:25 pm. Not one word about even the possibility of aftercare.

I noticed this today, too. It makes me wonder if they are trying to walk it back.

It’s going to be one of those things that is desperately uneven at different schools. If your school has an involved PTA, you’ll have extra programming to choose from but it will be $$. If your kids are in SACC, they’ll just have extra SACC hours on those days. If you don’t have much of a PTA, it’ll be crickets and “remember to pick up your kids at 12:25, see you tomorrow!”

I totally agree with you that it’s going to be uneven and look different at different schools. But just because you might have an involved PTA, don’t necessarily bank on there being Monday programming to choose from. It’s not as easy as some may think for a PTA to schedule and oversee a three-hour enrichment program on top of the many things they already do. My guess is a lot of PTAs aren’t going to want to be involved with this.

-President of an involved PTA

This. The sweet spot is involved PTA with working parent officers. A bunch of SAHMs are not going to blow their budget and spend their time programing for working parents

What do you mean by blow their budget?

Maybe the poster meant using PTA funds, but that’s not possible anyway. The PTA can’t spend money in ways that don’t benefit all students equally. The actual reason is the time and the hassle. Most parents, whether SAHM or working parents with flexibility or help, who can pick up their kids at 12:30 then go do something fun with them or go to doctor appointments, aren’t going to be interested in helping to stand up programming on those afternoons.

And even with the outside companies that come in to run classes, there is work and time involved to organize and manage those.

PTAs spend money on after school programing all the time. This program would easily qualify. Something like chess club is little to no cost for us, but when we bring in an outside vendor, we usually take a loss even though we charge

Anonymous wrote:It sure didn't take long for the teachers union to screw us over.

Collective bargaining has nothing whatsoever to do with this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just got an email from my kids' elementary school about early release. The text explicitly says that students will dismiss at 12:25 pm. Not one word about even the possibility of aftercare.

I noticed this today, too. It makes me wonder if they are trying to walk it back.

It’s going to be one of those things that is desperately uneven at different schools. If your school has an involved PTA, you’ll have extra programming to choose from but it will be $$. If your kids are in SACC, they’ll just have extra SACC hours on those days. If you don’t have much of a PTA, it’ll be crickets and “remember to pick up your kids at 12:25, see you tomorrow!”

I totally agree with you that it’s going to be uneven and look different at different schools. But just because you might have an involved PTA, don’t necessarily bank on there being Monday programming to choose from. It’s not as easy as some may think for a PTA to schedule and oversee a three-hour enrichment program on top of the many things they already do. My guess is a lot of PTAs aren’t going to want to be involved with this.

-President of an involved PTA

This. The sweet spot is involved PTA with working parent officers. A bunch of SAHMs are not going to blow their budget and spend their time programing for working parents

What do you mean by blow their budget?

Maybe the poster meant using PTA funds, but that’s not possible anyway. The PTA can’t spend money in ways that don’t benefit all students equally. The actual reason is the time and the hassle. Most parents, whether SAHM or working parents with flexibility or help, who can pick up their kids at 12:30 then go do something fun with them or go to doctor appointments, aren’t going to be interested in helping to stand up programming on those afternoons.

And even with the outside companies that come in to run classes, there is work and time involved to organize and manage those.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just got an email from my kids' elementary school about early release. The text explicitly says that students will dismiss at 12:25 pm. Not one word about even the possibility of aftercare.

I noticed this today, too. It makes me wonder if they are trying to walk it back.

It’s going to be one of those things that is desperately uneven at different schools. If your school has an involved PTA, you’ll have extra programming to choose from but it will be $$. If your kids are in SACC, they’ll just have extra SACC hours on those days. If you don’t have much of a PTA, it’ll be crickets and “remember to pick up your kids at 12:25, see you tomorrow!”

I totally agree with you that it’s going to be uneven and look different at different schools. But just because you might have an involved PTA, don’t necessarily bank on there being Monday programming to choose from. It’s not as easy as some may think for a PTA to schedule and oversee a three-hour enrichment program on top of the many things they already do. My guess is a lot of PTAs aren’t going to want to be involved with this.

-President of an involved PTA

This. The sweet spot is involved PTA with working parent officers. A bunch of SAHMs are not going to blow their budget and spend their time programing for working parents

What do you mean by blow their budget?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just got an email from my kids' elementary school about early release. The text explicitly says that students will dismiss at 12:25 pm. Not one word about even the possibility of aftercare.

I noticed this today, too. It makes me wonder if they are trying to walk it back.

It’s going to be one of those things that is desperately uneven at different schools. If your school has an involved PTA, you’ll have extra programming to choose from but it will be $$. If your kids are in SACC, they’ll just have extra SACC hours on those days. If you don’t have much of a PTA, it’ll be crickets and “remember to pick up your kids at 12:25, see you tomorrow!”

I totally agree with you that it’s going to be uneven and look different at different schools. But just because you might have an involved PTA, don’t necessarily bank on there being Monday programming to choose from. It’s not as easy as some may think for a PTA to schedule and oversee a three-hour enrichment program on top of the many things they already do. My guess is a lot of PTAs aren’t going to want to be involved with this.

-President of an involved PTA

This. The sweet spot is involved PTA with working parent officers. A bunch of SAHMs are not going to blow their budget and spend their time programing for working parents

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just got an email from my kids' elementary school about early release. The text explicitly says that students will dismiss at 12:25 pm. Not one word about even the possibility of aftercare.

I noticed this today, too. It makes me wonder if they are trying to walk it back.

It’s going to be one of those things that is desperately uneven at different schools. If your school has an involved PTA, you’ll have extra programming to choose from but it will be $$. If your kids are in SACC, they’ll just have extra SACC hours on those days. If you don’t have much of a PTA, it’ll be crickets and “remember to pick up your kids at 12:25, see you tomorrow!”

I totally agree with you that it’s going to be uneven and look different at different schools. But just because you might have an involved PTA, don’t necessarily bank on there being Monday programming to choose from. It’s not as easy as some may think for a PTA to schedule and oversee a three-hour enrichment program on top of the many things they already do. My guess is a lot of PTAs aren’t going to want to be involved with this.

-President of an involved PTA

Anonymous wrote:Is this for sure happening? Trying to plan out Thanksgiving and if we have an early release Monday, we are going to take the whole week off.

It seems to be definitely happening, but only half the elementary schools will have the Mon before Thanksgiving break as a half-day. The other half have a different Monday in Nov. You may want to check if your kids' school is one that will, if that is a deciding factor.

Also didn't see this on the parts of the last thread that I read, so apologies if it was discussed. These "half-day" Mondays are 3 hrs early release while the other regular half-days are 2 hr early releases. I understand why they did that and split the elementaries into 2 different groups of days off, but these both are going to cause a confusion for some parents.

Anonymous wrote:Our school indicated early dismissal, not alternative plans.

Our school hasn’t indicated alternative plans either.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree. I think they should have just sucked it up and added 2 or 3 extra teacher work days to the calendar. I am a teacher but will be doing these trainings. My kid will also come home. I’m not keeping them there for no reason.

They really want kids to leave early yet can’t force them so in reality any kid can stay? It’s such a mess.

Of course they can. They’ll just put them on the bus.

But any parent can say they done have childcare and need to stay. They aren’t going to be following up on that.

They’ll probably be a list of kids generated by then, just get your kids in it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I agree. I think they should have just sucked it up and added 2 or 3 extra teacher work days to the calendar. I am a teacher but will be doing these trainings. My kid will also come home. I’m not keeping them there for no reason.

They really want kids to leave early yet can’t force them so in reality any kid can stay? It’s such a mess.

Of course they can. They’ll just put them on the bus.

But any parent can say they done have childcare and need to stay. They aren’t going to be following up on that.

Our school indicated early dismissal, not alternative plans.

Anonymous wrote:I agree. I think they should have just sucked it up and added 2 or 3 extra teacher work days to the calendar. I am a teacher but will be doing these trainings. My kid will also come home. I’m not keeping them there for no reason.

They really want kids to leave early yet can’t force them so in reality any kid can stay? It’s such a mess.

Of course they can. They’ll just put them on the bus.

I agree. I think they should have just sucked it up and added 2 or 3 extra teacher work days to the calendar. I am a teacher but will be doing these trainings. My kid will also come home. I’m not keeping them there for no reason.

They really want kids to leave early yet can’t force them so in reality any kid can stay? It’s such a mess.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do all the teachers vattend the training? Apologies if that’s a silly question. Just wondering if there were any exempt teachers (e.g., specials teachers) who could help supervise the enrichment.

Specialists, IAs, and teachers already trained in SOR do not attend the training. They will be providing a lot of the coverage during the 3 hour early releases..

The trainings are brand new and not even done yet. They are several hours long and won’t be completed until next summer based on this schedule. No one is going to be done with these.

But it seems they are excusing teachers who are trained in OG or LETRS so they might be used for childcare. And IAs won’t be doing the same trainings as teachers.

This is a great way to retain staff

+1, I was thinking the same thing. I left the classroom two years ago, and when I saw that they may use teachers for childcare, I thought “oh boy”, they’re going to lose a lot more teachers.

Yup and who is going to organize the "babysitting" activities. I left as well and it's things like this that push teachers over the edge and out the door. IA's shouldn't be doing this either. Gatehouse this is a you and the board thing-figure it out.