Anonymous wrote:Schools are required to have a certain number of weeks off in the summer. Moving it to this week wouldn’t allow for enough days given our late June release date. Not to mention, starting before Labor Day is horrible.

Really?

Anonymous wrote:A better question is why they are starting before Labor Day & still not getting out until late June.

Because we had to add more days off to coincide with more religious holidays.

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Anonymous wrote:They don’t care what you want. The teachers get the schedule they want.

They tried to match FCPS this year but then FCPS adopted after us and made a bunch of changes. Going forward expect us to match to FCPS. The teachers who live there and have kids in school there want this. The community engagement within Arlington is just optics.

This is exactly right.

It's because without teachers that live in Fairfax working in APS, we wouldn't have enough teachers. Younger teachers can't afford to buy in Arlington anymore and are moving to Fairfax more often. Once they have kids, they switch to FCPS because its easier for life when everything lines up. All the teachers that left my school last year were going to FCPS because that's where they live.

As a PP said, then don't poll us. Just say why we need to match to Fairfax and do it. I get the reason. It rightfully annoys people when you ask them and then ignore the input.

But that’s the Arlington Way. Solicit all kids of feedback and ignore all of it. This isn’t new.

Anonymous wrote:One thing I am curious about- Is summer break length due to teacher contracts? (How does this play out for year round schools).

The length of the school year is set by teacher contracts. The length of the summer is set by building reno timeliness and bus maintenance.

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Anonymous wrote:I just wish they would have followed through with what they said in 2019 (or 2018?) and made calendar decisions by April of the prior year so I could plan better!

The calendar was adopted in December 2020, that’s plenty of time

Lots of people book summer vacations well before that timing.

Well guess what you know they are off all of July and 1/2 of august. The end of august is hurricane season.

The hard part is there aren't camps the week before school starts, so people use that week as vacation to fill the childcare gap. But it's not clear what week that will be. We already booked our vacation rental for next August, as it was filling up. Hopefully we predicted the right week before school starting.

APS really should set a calendar earlier. It's not like holidays aren't known more than a year in advance. My school district as a kid had a 5 year calendar and each year they set the calendar for the 5th year out.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just wish they would have followed through with what they said in 2019 (or 2018?) and made calendar decisions by April of the prior year so I could plan better!

The calendar was adopted in December 2020, that’s plenty of time

Lots of people book summer vacations well before that timing.

Well guess what you know they are off all of July and 1/2 of august. The end of august is hurricane season.

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Anonymous wrote:Everyone else including private schools started this week. With all the extra holidays this year why is the start date so late?

You mean Catholic schools. Independent schools mostly start after Labor Day.

+1

None of the private school families we know have started yet.

It’s time for a year round calendar (with more shorter breaks)

Anonymous wrote:Everyone else including private schools started this week. With all the extra holidays this year why is the start date so late?

You mean Catholic schools. Independent schools mostly start after Labor Day.

One thing I am curious about- Is summer break length due to teacher contracts? (How does this play out for year round schools).

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Anonymous wrote:There is a full calendar process every year with different options and people vote. Next year engage with it and make your voice heard. Montgomery county, FCCPS, APS, DCPS all staet next Monday. Loud on starts this Thursday.

I'm so sick of people saying this. I engaged a ton on this, and we still ended up with this shitty calendar this year where we start a week earlier than last year and still get out at the same time in June.

Because they added a bunch of non Christian holidays that we didn’t previously have off.

If that’s the case then why not start a week earlier?

It’s been said a few times, there’s a required number of weeks between the end and start of school. We stared a couple weeks later than originally planned last year due to covid/ virtual training For teachers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a full calendar process every year with different options and people vote. Next year engage with it and make your voice heard. Montgomery county, FCCPS, APS, DCPS all staet next Monday. Loud on starts this Thursday.

I'm so sick of people saying this. I engaged a ton on this, and we still ended up with this shitty calendar this year where we start a week earlier than last year and still get out at the same time in June.

Because they added a bunch of non Christian holidays that we didn’t previously have off.

If that’s the case then why not start a week earlier?

Anonymous wrote:I just wish they would have followed through with what they said in 2019 (or 2018?) and made calendar decisions by April of the prior year so I could plan better!

And we all wish COVID hadn’t happened- but alas. This is what f’ed up the calendar. We started a few weeks late due to COVID.

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:I just wish they would have followed through with what they said in 2019 (or 2018?) and made calendar decisions by April of the prior year so I could plan better!

The calendar was adopted in December 2020, that’s plenty of time

Barely. Most camp registrations are in January, booking vacation rentals starts in December, etc

We book our vacations in Sept. So December is late for us. But my point was they promised to start doing it in April of the prior year and I wish that would have happened.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just wish they would have followed through with what they said in 2019 (or 2018?) and made calendar decisions by April of the prior year so I could plan better!

The calendar was adopted in December 2020, that’s plenty of time

Barely. Most camp registrations are in January, booking vacation rentals starts in December, etc

Ok. It was adopted December 3rd.