Anonymous wrote:So we can close the school for 1-2 weeks for a Christian holiday, but giving other religions one day to observe is not okay with you? Give me a break.

This is either a deliberate misread of the previous comment or a logical fallacy.

Anonymous wrote:So we can close the school for 1-2 weeks for a Christian holiday, but giving other religions one day to observe is not okay with you? Give me a break.

You are not reading carefully.

I have no problem closing the schools to students on the actual holidays. I think that's a good thing.

What I am saying is that teachers who do not celebrate those holidays should use them as work days rather than having separate ones.

So like next week, we are closed for Diwali Monday, then a teacher work day on Tuesday... What I am saying is we should have no students Monday, awhile anyone who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as a teacher work day. Anyone who DOES celebrate Diwali gets monday off, and we pay for them to have a sub/temp some other time that week or month or whatever to make up their work day.

So now students don't have to be out two days, working parents have care, and every teacher gets their holidays and work days - at the cost of temps/subs to cover the additional holidays, rather than just fully sacrificing those days for students, like we are doing right now.

So we can close the school for 1-2 weeks for a Christian holiday, but giving other religions one day to observe is not okay with you? Give me a break.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have TWO days off next week. How?!?! I get it, Diwali, but how about any teacher who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as their work day, and we just give the handful of Diwali-celebrating teachers subs on Tuesday? It's insane.

Having off for the Jewish High Holy days had been wonderful this year and long overdue. As a school employee AND a parent it is so nice to bed able to observe these religious holidays without needing to use a personal day. In the past school have had teacher work days on religious holidays but I still had to use a personal day and somehow had to make up the work I missed. This is equity in action.

I am proposing that they give you a sub or other support some other day so that you personally can be out on your personal set of religious holidays at no cost to you. It is not logical to close the entire school to support this, rather than just scheduling that 5% of staff some alternate teacher work day.

This seems like a logical and reasonable solution. No way ACPS would adopt it. More than likely this is the warm up to the four day school week. It would be enormously damaging to everyone but especially to kids who are on the wrong end of the enormous learning gap and special ed kids. But ACPS and their enablers could care less about those kids. They proved that during the shut downs when they locked the school doors.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have TWO days off next week. How?!?! I get it, Diwali, but how about any teacher who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as their work day, and we just give the handful of Diwali-celebrating teachers subs on Tuesday? It's insane.

Having off for the Jewish High Holy days had been wonderful this year and long overdue. As a school employee AND a parent it is so nice to bed able to observe these religious holidays without needing to use a personal day. In the past school have had teacher work days on religious holidays but I still had to use a personal day and somehow had to make up the work I missed. This is equity in action.

I am proposing that they give you a sub or other support some other day so that you personally can be out on your personal set of religious holidays at no cost to you. It is not logical to close the entire school to support this, rather than just scheduling that 5% of staff some alternate teacher work day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have TWO days off next week. How?!?! I get it, Diwali, but how about any teacher who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as their work day, and we just give the handful of Diwali-celebrating teachers subs on Tuesday? It's insane.

Too much focus on "equity" and not enough focus on education and, yes, equity belongs in quotes because a lot of what is happening is lip service to equity while the policies ensure disparity remains.

I don't disagree with a need to focus on equity - but the thing that would actually advance equity is letting students' working parents actually work.

It's pretty obvious that ACPS is working on moving to a four day school week similar to what went on during the shut down. If you are going into contract negotiation season, it would be a good idea to negotiate for Mondays off or working from home. Get ahead of the inevitable.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have TWO days off next week. How?!?! I get it, Diwali, but how about any teacher who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as their work day, and we just give the handful of Diwali-celebrating teachers subs on Tuesday? It's insane.

Having off for the Jewish High Holy days had been wonderful this year and long overdue. As a school employee AND a parent it is so nice to bed able to observe these religious holidays without needing to use a personal day. In the past school have had teacher work days on religious holidays but I still had to use a personal day and somehow had to make up the work I missed. This is equity in action.

It's nice that you have time during the school day to read and post on message boards.

Anonymous wrote:We have TWO days off next week. How?!?! I get it, Diwali, but how about any teacher who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as their work day, and we just give the handful of Diwali-celebrating teachers subs on Tuesday? It's insane.

Having off for the Jewish High Holy days had been wonderful this year and long overdue. As a school employee AND a parent it is so nice to bed able to observe these religious holidays without needing to use a personal day. In the past school have had teacher work days on religious holidays but I still had to use a personal day and somehow had to make up the work I missed. This is equity in action.

Anonymous wrote:The one and only high school makes no sense. Why can't there be two or three. Take the minnie Howard campus and make it it's own stand alone high school. That would make much more sense.

Because having even a second high school would be racist. Equity trumps all. If we go down, we all go down together (except if you’re white with rich parents and you’re in honors classes which you only sign up for, you’re not placed in them).

I have jewish friends who really appreciate having those holy days off this year for their kids - and I think you can keep doing that for these other religious holidays for the kids... but it's insanity to try to do it for the teachers too.

Put the teacher work days on those holidays, give impacted teachers a free day with a sub. Reduce student days off in half and advance actual equity.

I'd love to see the number of kids at Brooks that celebrate Diwali. I'm going to bet it's maybe 3. So yeah, close a 400 student school for 3 kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We have TWO days off next week. How?!?! I get it, Diwali, but how about any teacher who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as their work day, and we just give the handful of Diwali-celebrating teachers subs on Tuesday? It's insane.

Too much focus on "equity" and not enough focus on education and, yes, equity belongs in quotes because a lot of what is happening is lip service to equity while the policies ensure disparity remains.

I don't disagree with a need to focus on equity - but the thing that would actually advance equity is letting students' working parents actually work.

Anonymous wrote:We have TWO days off next week. How?!?! I get it, Diwali, but how about any teacher who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as their work day, and we just give the handful of Diwali-celebrating teachers subs on Tuesday? It's insane.

Too much focus on "equity" and not enough focus on education and, yes, equity belongs in quotes because a lot of what is happening is lip service to equity while the policies ensure disparity remains.

We have TWO days off next week. How?!?! I get it, Diwali, but how about any teacher who doesn't celebrate Diwali uses Monday as their work day, and we just give the handful of Diwali-celebrating teachers subs on Tuesday? It's insane.

Anonymous wrote:The holiday and teacher workdays, etc this fall are truly out of control. (But we are happy otherwise)

100%. If your child plays one of several travel sports that run through the summer you are limited to vacations to about 10 days in August.

With the pre-Labor Day start and all the BS holidays/half days you are pretty much hosed on summer travel.