The half days were for the literacy act trainings. Other districts added full teacher workdays or paid for summer training.

These Mondays were heavily structured and only ended up with half an hour of extra planning time per Monday for our teachers. They were assigned more training and meetings for these hours at the local level too.

Teacher planning and learning time is important but these early release days were not worth it!

This needs to get widespread coverage. No one knows about this. The average FCPS parent doesn’t have bandwidth to follow every minute of school board meetings and everyone I am telling about this doesn’t even believe it because it sounds so ridiculous.

Anonymous wrote:With the massive increase in RTO this is nuts especially on a Wednesday. That is a day many folks are required to be in the office. I hope SACC had some sort of heads up on this so that they can hopefully staff for this.

FFS, I can’t anymore.

I agree we need to stop this insanity. Interested in other ideas on what would be effective. They don’t care about kids and families, not really about teachers. Only their own admin.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it going to be 7 random days or every Wednesday? Will they be the same days across the county or different by pyramid like they were this year? The current system is very confusing.

Do you seriously think it’s only 7 days? Do you not see where this is going? What it looks like to me is that they’re going to do it every week.

THATS WHY I AM ASKING!! It’s not clear! We should be able to believe what senior elected and appointed officials tell us!!!!

I mean given that we can't, we do have a solution. A few, actually, but recalls are unlikely to work right now. Pressuring the SB to fire Reid and voting for a new SB in 2027 are on the table though.

Interested in this. How would this work? What steps could a random DCUMer do to help put the pressure on?

Negative press in mainstream outlets (not right leaning ones) are about all they seem to care about.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is it going to be 7 random days or every Wednesday? Will they be the same days across the county or different by pyramid like they were this year? The current system is very confusing.

Do you seriously think it’s only 7 days? Do you not see where this is going? What it looks like to me is that they’re going to do it every week.

THATS WHY I AM ASKING!! It’s not clear! We should be able to believe what senior elected and appointed officials tell us!!!!

I mean given that we can't, we do have a solution. A few, actually, but recalls are unlikely to work right now. Pressuring the SB to fire Reid and voting for a new SB in 2027 are on the table though.

Interested in this. How would this work? What steps could a random DCUMer do to help put the pressure on?

^^^

By "worked OK" I don't mean it was a good idea. I mean the snow day issue didn't matter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bad look on FCPS that was brought up last 5 minutes of school board as a this is happening. Question: are there any days next school year that are full weeks?

She also talks about so many Monday holidays being an issue, but how is that actually a problem if they managed to get the right number of days in this year? Makes me think they want to increase the number of half days.

Sounds like they want to go back to every week early releases to bring ES planning time in line with MS/HS.

Which some people on here said they were doing last summer, and the rest of us insisted they couldn't possibly be being so disingenous.

Shame on us who believed them.

What kind of fuzzy math does it take to get us to the required number of school hours/days if there are weekly half days at the ES level? I’m seriously asking because I don’t know how it can work? Assuming a weekly 3 hour early release, and 4 weeks in a month, that’s 12 hours out of school. At least. Sometimes 15 if there are 5 Wednesdays. But they start to send “attendance reminders” if your kid is on track to miss 2 days a month of school …

We have like 20 snow days built in with the 990 hour requirement. So really not much. And I believe weekly "half" days are only 2 hour early releases, not 3 hour early releases.

Remember we did this until I think 2012 and it worked OK.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I thought it was only due to Benchmark/VA Literacy Act alao, but if you look at the link below it's more vague and there's language than implies this was always in the works:

"At the end of the 2024-25 school year, we will evaluate the plan’s effectiveness. This includes researching whether staff had enough time to understand their training and whether student learning increased.

The Steering Committee will make their recommendation by June 1, 2025, if not earlier, to determine whether limited early release Mondays should continue."

https://www.fcps.edu/family-resources/safety-and-transportation/limited-early-release-mondays#reasons-for-early-release-mondays

It's amazing how this iteration of Gatehouse can't be direct on their plans. If this was always in the works say so and let parents mentally prep.

In my young days as a teacher, my school system provided training in the summer with a stipend and graduate credit. It may have been a grant from Title I as I was a Title I teacher.

Implementing a reading program should not require this much training and disruption.

Possible suggestions:

Cut Gatehouse and give teachers two extra days in August for training.
Provide Zoom training in summer for some type of recertification credit or a stipend of some type.

I am not familiar with Benchmark, but most programs come with instruction and manuals. If the teachers cannot understand it, that is a much bigger problem.

This is no longer about Benchmark. It's about equity in planning time between elementary teachers and MS/HS teachers. The issue was introduced way back when Garza was superintendent. If they meant to bring back half days for ES teacher planning, though, they should have said so upfront instead of pretending it was just for the training mandated under the VA Literacy Act.

Benchmark was always a cover. The fact that so many people fell for it is why they did it. A lot of people have zero critical thinking skills and believe whatever they’re told.

Anyone who goes back to the old threads about the half day Mondays this year will see a ton of people parroting FCPS’ reasonings.

If people start to look around at other neighboring counties they will find out that some other districts (also required to follow the new VA laws) didn’t need an extra 7 half days of extra training. That should get you suspicious as to why FCPS is doing it under the guise that the laws forced them to do it. How come the laws didn’t force Prince William Public Schools to take an extra 7 half days?

They don’t have to hide behind the law anymore, because they can’t. It’s too obvious that it’s a lie.

But they will now say “the schedule is given ahead of time so people need to deal with it.” It’s not like anyone can stop them from doing whatever they want.

What are you talking about? No one asked parents if the Benchmark half day Mondays were okay. It was just foisted upon us after school let out last year. We weren't given a choice.

They don’t have to give anyone a choice. They can do whatever they want.

They lied about the reasoning because they don’t want to get criticized. So they blamed their actions on the new literacy law. The law made us do this. Blame the governor, blame everyone else - don’t blame FCPS. (Oh but don’t ask us why other VA counties don’t need all this extra time for training; we don’t know why; we just need to remember to blame the law).

And people fell for this simple trick! Many people DEFENDED them - “their hands were tied by the state government” and “they had no choice.” Thats why they did it.

They didn’t even have to lie or use the law as cover - they could just do whatever they want. Who is going to stop them? But these people want good PR so it’s better to use an easy scapegoat for their end goal.

It was a good decision because people actually did defend them with the same lines “we have to follow the new laws… this can only be done by half days.”

Now they can’t blame the law anymore so they will need to frame it in a different way (for good PR). They don’t need a reason to do anything but I suspect they will go along with something like “less time in school is better for kids so you can schedule doctor’s appointments, get haircuts on the weekdays, spend more time with your children, improve mental health, etc.” There are a ton of ways to spin it as a good thing that you should support. And they will definitely get defenders who believe “wow they truly do “care!” This is all done for the kids!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bad look on FCPS that was brought up last 5 minutes of school board as a this is happening. Question: are there any days next school year that are full weeks?

She also talks about so many Monday holidays being an issue, but how is that actually a problem if they managed to get the right number of days in this year? Makes me think they want to increase the number of half days.

Sounds like they want to go back to every week early releases to bring ES planning time in line with MS/HS.

Which some people on here said they were doing last summer, and the rest of us insisted they couldn't possibly be being so disingenous.

Shame on us who believed them.

What kind of fuzzy math does it take to get us to the required number of school hours/days if there are weekly half days at the ES level? I’m seriously asking because I don’t know how it can work? Assuming a weekly 3 hour early release, and 4 weeks in a month, that’s 12 hours out of school. At least. Sometimes 15 if there are 5 Wednesdays. But they start to send “attendance reminders” if your kid is on track to miss 2 days a month of school …

Chiming in to say that I had no idea that this was a thing outside of special needs schools. There are SN schools in the area that do this because of the burden of paperwork for kids with IEPs and need for teacher prof ed. Also half-day Wednesdays happen in France.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bad look on FCPS that was brought up last 5 minutes of school board as a this is happening. Question: are there any days next school year that are full weeks?

She also talks about so many Monday holidays being an issue, but how is that actually a problem if they managed to get the right number of days in this year? Makes me think they want to increase the number of half days.

Sounds like they want to go back to every week early releases to bring ES planning time in line with MS/HS.

Which some people on here said they were doing last summer, and the rest of us insisted they couldn't possibly be being so disingenous.

Shame on us who believed them.

Not a good look. I was an elementary teacher. High school instruction and elementary instruction require very different schedules. Here is a hint to administration: fewer meetings and more flexibility with planning for teachers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bad look on FCPS that was brought up last 5 minutes of school board as a this is happening. Question: are there any days next school year that are full weeks?

She also talks about so many Monday holidays being an issue, but how is that actually a problem if they managed to get the right number of days in this year? Makes me think they want to increase the number of half days.

Sounds like they want to go back to every week early releases to bring ES planning time in line with MS/HS.

Which some people on here said they were doing last summer, and the rest of us insisted they couldn't possibly be being so disingenous.

Shame on us who believed them.

Anonymous wrote:Bad look on FCPS that was brought up last 5 minutes of school board as a this is happening. Question: are there any days next school year that are full weeks?

She also talks about so many Monday holidays being an issue, but how is that actually a problem if they managed to get the right number of days in this year? Makes me think they want to increase the number of half days.

Bad look on FCPS that was brought up last 5 minutes of school board as a this is happening. Question: are there any days next school year that are full weeks?