Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the 2025-2026 calendar will be changed.

They are not going to shorten the school year. They would need to remove either the federal holidays or the new religious days or shorten the Winter Break and I don't see them doing any of that. The only one I potentially see them doing is removing the federal holidays. Losing the new religious holidays will cause a stink with the various religions and shortening winter break will piss off the people who take a month at that time of year to travel to Asia/SE Asia visit family and the parents who want two weeks in Europe or skiing.

If religious holiday must be kept as days off for all students, then schedule Teacher work days (professional development or planning days) on religious holidays and allow specific teachers to take off religious holiday on Teacher workdays if relevant to their religion.

-Teacher

Teacher here. They are doing that for some of them that year - Lunar New Year and Orthodox Good Friday. But there are way too many Professional Workdays - we don't need 10 throughout the year.

I would be thrilled if our workdays were all actually work days, not professional development days.

I get nothing out of the PD days. They do not help me to be a better teacher, they do nothing positive to impact instruction in my classroom, do not help me to better understand my students or their families, and usually piss off me and most of my colleagues.

We have PD on how to better run meetings with other teachers. We don't need that. No teacher I know cares a lick about meeting protocol. We care about teaching and our students. We don't care if every team meeting has a unique opening grounding question. Why are we wasting time learning how to write icebreakers? Such a waste of time.

We have PD during which the facilitators always say "I invite you to read over our goals and working agreements" before they remind us how to run a meeting. Waste of time. It is infantilizing and demeaning and not at all helpful to us doing our jobs.

In a 90 minute PD, 45 minutes is spent on these reminders of how to run meetings. Why? We aren't in the business of meeting. We want to teach. If the PD actually helped us be more effective in our classrooms, we'd probably be more receptive to it. But it's all about how to run meetings. It's a waste of time. The people who design these PD sessions haven't stepped foot in a classroom in years if not decades so they are clueless about what effective PD looks like. But they don't ask the people who are working with children everyday because our opinions and feedback don't matter.

If we ran our classrooms the way our PD is run, students would receive no more than 2 hours of actual instruction per day. The rest of the time would be us saying ridiculous things like "I invite you to read over our class rules for the 350th time this school year... Now I want you all to share your answer to 'if you were to travel to a new place, blindfolded, what would you need to know?'... Now that we've heard from all 30 students about what they'd want to know, let's review our class working agreements again... Great, now let's talk about our goals for today... Now that we've talked about our goals for the day, I invite you to read our class rules again... Thank you for engaging in that review. Now let's take out our folders... Wonderful. You've all followed me direction to take out your folders. Let's review our class working agreements again to discuss which working agreement you just followed..."

To be fair I'm pretty sure that some teachers actually do run class this way.

I'm thinking of you middle DC's second grade teacher.

Students YE date is June 11th 2025(2nd Wednesday)followed by staff development days.There are two Teacher work days the following week. But in past teachers weren’t “required” to be in school. As long as rooms were cleaned out, Grading could be finished and submitted from home. Is this just school dependent? I’m mainly referring to HS .

Anonymous wrote:My DC is in 11th. We did not have 2 weeks off when she was in K. The 2 week off thing and all these holidays are totally new.

The year is too long after SOL. I don't care what all the teachers say, after SOL/AP the school year is over. Such a waste. I love all my kids teachers (well most of them) but everyone is done after that. Such a waste and sends a terrible message to our kids about school. Movies, dumb worksheets, dead time. Such BS that the school system doesn't realize this. I mean in our SS, the last 2 weeks are mostly half days anyway.

So you are advocating for a longer summer and a shorter school year?

Personally, I like the longer school year and a shorter summer. No need to have 11-12 weeks summers. Would your kids prefer that to more breaks during the school year? I really think not. But, whatever, there are 180 days of school in either option.

My DC is in 11th. We did not have 2 weeks off when she was in K. The 2 week off thing and all these holidays are totally new.

The year is too long after SOL. I don't care what all the teachers say, after SOL/AP the school year is over. Such a waste. I love all my kids teachers (well most of them) but everyone is done after that. Such a waste and sends a terrible message to our kids about school. Movies, dumb worksheets, dead time. Such BS that the school system doesn't realize this. I mean in our SS, the last 2 weeks are mostly half days anyway.

Anonymous wrote:FCPS still has 11 snow days built in. Kind of ridiculous. Cut a week off there.

Come on people reap the benefits of global warming. They don’t even put 11 snow days on the calendar in Alaska.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I prefer the longer school year.

me too

I prefer the longer school year as well. Actually, I wish our 180 days were spread out over the whole year with 3-week breaks in between the quarters and a 5-week break in the summer. That would be awesome!

Many local pools would probably shut down. They wouldn’t survive a 5 week summer financially. I know it seems frivolous to some, but many wouldn’t want that to happen.

They could just start recruiting college kids and international kids. I guarantee that local pools would find a way. I mean, they are open all summer long now even though HS kids are in school for half of June and half of August, right?

I wasn't thinking about the guard staff. I was thinking about how many people would choose to not pay for only 5 weeks of use.

When I was a kid in Texas, the local pools were open from the end of April to the end of Sept. Kids were in school until the end of May and then returned to school at the beginning of August. Families still bought pool passes because kids went to the pool after school and on weekends. At our pool in Fairfax, tons of kids go to the pool after school and on weekends when school is in session. I know you do not want to think so, but pool and school CAN coexist easily.

Anonymous wrote:You must be a teacher. I would be happy for my children to get a week of extra instruction.

It's not an extra week of instruction it's a prolonged school due to 5 extra days off during that school year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I prefer the longer school year.

me too

I prefer the longer school year as well. Actually, I wish our 180 days were spread out over the whole year with 3-week breaks in between the quarters and a 5-week break in the summer. That would be awesome!

Many local pools would probably shut down. They wouldn’t survive a 5 week summer financially. I know it seems frivolous to some, but many wouldn’t want that to happen.

They could just start recruiting college kids and international kids. I guarantee that local pools would find a way. I mean, they are open all summer long now even though HS kids are in school for half of June and half of August, right?

I wasn't thinking about the guard staff. I was thinking about how many people would choose to not pay for only 5 weeks of use.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the 2025-2026 calendar will be changed.

They are not going to shorten the school year. They would need to remove either the federal holidays or the new religious days or shorten the Winter Break and I don't see them doing any of that. The only one I potentially see them doing is removing the federal holidays. Losing the new religious holidays will cause a stink with the various religions and shortening winter break will piss off the people who take a month at that time of year to travel to Asia/SE Asia visit family and the parents who want two weeks in Europe or skiing.

If religious holiday must be kept as days off for all students, then schedule Teacher work days (professional development or planning days) on religious holidays and allow specific teachers to take off religious holiday on Teacher workdays if relevant to their religion.

-Teacher

Teacher here. They are doing that for some of them that year - Lunar New Year and Orthodox Good Friday. But there are way too many Professional Workdays - we don't need 10 throughout the year.

I would be thrilled if our workdays were all actually work days, not professional development days.

I get nothing out of the PD days. They do not help me to be a better teacher, they do nothing positive to impact instruction in my classroom, do not help me to better understand my students or their families, and usually piss off me and most of my colleagues.

We have PD on how to better run meetings with other teachers. We don't need that. No teacher I know cares a lick about meeting protocol. We care about teaching and our students. We don't care if every team meeting has a unique opening grounding question. Why are we wasting time learning how to write icebreakers? Such a waste of time.

We have PD during which the facilitators always say "I invite you to read over our goals and working agreements" before they remind us how to run a meeting. Waste of time. It is infantilizing and demeaning and not at all helpful to us doing our jobs.

In a 90 minute PD, 45 minutes is spent on these reminders of how to run meetings. Why? We aren't in the business of meeting. We want to teach. If the PD actually helped us be more effective in our classrooms, we'd probably be more receptive to it. But it's all about how to run meetings. It's a waste of time. The people who design these PD sessions haven't stepped foot in a classroom in years if not decades so they are clueless about what effective PD looks like. But they don't ask the people who are working with children everyday because our opinions and feedback don't matter.

If we ran our classrooms the way our PD is run, students would receive no more than 2 hours of actual instruction per day. The rest of the time would be us saying ridiculous things like "I invite you to read over our class rules for the 350th time this school year... Now I want you all to share your answer to 'if you were to travel to a new place, blindfolded, what would you need to know?'... Now that we've heard from all 30 students about what they'd want to know, let's review our class working agreements again... Great, now let's talk about our goals for today... Now that we've talked about our goals for the day, I invite you to read our class rules again... Thank you for engaging in that review. Now let's take out our folders... Wonderful. You've all followed me direction to take out your folders. Let's review our class working agreements again to discuss which working agreement you just followed..."

You must be a teacher. I would be happy for my children to get a week of extra instruction.

90% of 8th grades says li can’t divide big numbers without a calculator yet”
Schools needs to be open 7

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the 2025-2026 calendar will be changed.

They are not going to shorten the school year. They would need to remove either the federal holidays or the new religious days or shorten the Winter Break and I don't see them doing any of that. The only one I potentially see them doing is removing the federal holidays. Losing the new religious holidays will cause a stink with the various religions and shortening winter break will piss off the people who take a month at that time of year to travel to Asia/SE Asia visit family and the parents who want two weeks in Europe or skiing.

It wouldn't necessarily be shorter then the current school year but would be reduced back to the same length as this year and next year. These 2 years are a tad long for students but that year is ridiculous.

Anonymous wrote:You can't keep extending the Xmas break and adding days off for all kinds of things... and then also want to start later in the fall and get out earlier in June!

Either you need to shorten your breaks and reduce days off (which I 100% support), or you end up with what appears to be a longer school year (shorter summer break).

People made their picks for longer breaks, and the school board was happy to comply.

The winter break is 2 weeks in many places so that isn't the issue only the northeast seems to not have 2 weeks (except when Christmas is on Wednesday or Thursday and even then some districts will have a 2 day week) but outside the northeast the vast majority of districts are off 2 weeks. The issue isn't winter break it's the holidays where only 2% would be absent if school were held that prolongs things. It's better to bring this up now then in a year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I prefer the longer school year.

me too

I prefer the longer school year as well. Actually, I wish our 180 days were spread out over the whole year with 3-week breaks in between the quarters and a 5-week break in the summer. That would be awesome!

Many local pools would probably shut down. They wouldn’t survive a 5 week summer financially. I know it seems frivolous to some, but many wouldn’t want that to happen.

They could just start recruiting college kids and international kids. I guarantee that local pools would find a way. I mean, they are open all summer long now even though HS kids are in school for half of June and half of August, right?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I prefer the longer school year.

me too

I prefer the longer school year as well. Actually, I wish our 180 days were spread out over the whole year with 3-week breaks in between the quarters and a 5-week break in the summer. That would be awesome!

Many local pools would probably shut down. They wouldn’t survive a 5 week summer financially. I know it seems frivolous to some, but many wouldn’t want that to happen.