Anonymous wrote:The last 3 weeks will be useless regardless of what month they take place in.

This. As it was in the 1970s and 80s when I was in school. We had field day, class parties, filmstrips, chorus concert rehearsals, etc.

This is hard for me to imagine. I'm not in VA, but my district would never allow a week's worth of movies and parties. We can have one 30 minute end of the year party, one field day, and one 30 minute movie. Not per day, but over those last 3 weeks. I mean, we're all still teaching. But maybe other people are in poorly run schools, I don't know.

My kid in private has a test (actual graded test- not SOL crap) the Tuesday of the last week of school.

My APS kid won’t even go the last few weeks.

This is how we end up with principals begging families not to skip out on the end of the year because it threatens accreditation.

This makes me feel better about my private school starting after Labor Day and ending a week earlier

When I was in school only the last couple days were for fun. In AP classes, after the AP test, we would dive into one topic for a few weeks. For example, for AP US history we would go back and spend a couple weeks focused on something fun like Woodstock. But we would still be reading, writing and analyzing. My kids are in middle school and some kids are so far behind this really seems like a missed opportunity to not be doing more reading and writing (and not just reading on their own but reading and discussing as a group). My kids school also does essentially no teaching on half days so overall there are a lot of days when essentially no learning is going on.

this is why I am OK with starting school earlier, since the last couple weeks are pretty much a waste.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last 3 weeks will be useless regardless of what month they take place in.

As someone who grew up in New York with Regents exams (their version of SOLs), I don't understand why the SOLs are given so early. The Regents were given the last week or two of the school year, so mid-late June. The upper grades spent the last few weeks reviewing for the exams.

I don't get it, either!

Anonymous wrote:The group Arlington Parents for Education has pushed for more days in school. So you can thank them for the useless days in June.

That's ridiculous. The useless days in June pre-dated APE by decades. It's the "necessity" to "observe" as many religious holidays as possible in the name of inclusion that keeps those days in June despite starting earlier in August.

Agree. Just end it the day before Memorial Day.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The last 3 weeks will be useless regardless of what month they take place in.

As someone who grew up in New York with Regents exams (their version of SOLs), I don't understand why the SOLs are given so early. The Regents were given the last week or two of the school year, so mid-late June. The upper grades spent the last few weeks reviewing for the exams.

OP here. Yes. This is another issue.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They have to have 180 days and they have so may teacher work days, Jewish holidays, Eid, all of the fake holidays the government gets. They hardly had a full week all year. I bet there were fewer than 10.

No, they only need 990 hours. But some people are pushing APS to increase the number of days even though they just lengthened the school day, too. It’s maddening.

Can have a 180 day school year and still end 5 days early by eliminating useless holidays in the middle.

Anonymous wrote:The last 3 weeks will be useless regardless of what month they take place in.

They won't be if they don't change the dates SOLs are scheduled or push SOLs to the last week of May/first week of June. Then you have two weeks of uselessness - one week can be fun and games and then one week can be added to the summer.

Anonymous wrote:Regardless of when school starts or ends, the last two weeks have always and always will be like this. I remember it from back when I was in FCPS! Field trips, music concerts, field day, movies, etc. I don’t mind. The kids are occupied and celebrating the end of the school year with friend. The learning piece has mostly wrapped up and now they get to blow off some steam before launching into summer.

OP here. I understand. But do we need two weeks of this? How about having one week of fun and the other week added to the summer break?

Anonymous wrote:They have to have 180 days and they have so may teacher work days, Jewish holidays, Eid, all of the fake holidays the government gets. They hardly had a full week all year. I bet there were fewer than 10.

OP here. Yes they need to prioritize full weeks. I am Muslim and my kids loved having Eid off but I realize there are negatives. I don't have a strong position either way on the religious holidays but if we keep them we need to take other days off out.

Anonymous wrote:The group Arlington Parents for Education has pushed for more days in school. So you can thank them for the useless days in June.

OP here. I dunno who Arlington Parents for Education are but I agree that we need 180 school days a year. However the last two weeks of the school year are pointless and we need to find days during the year to add. I don't have a strong position on the religious holidays that they have added but I think that if they want to keep them as holidays, they need to find other days to take away. I think we can take away Columbus Day, President's Day and find three other days off to take away.