This year’s FCPS calendar is a disaster, and the token “fixes” for next year are almost comical in how little they address. The entire school year has been one long exercise in chaos. My kid is stressed, rushed, and wrung out because the system can’t manage a stable schedule. Eight early‑release days for elementary is indefensible. Just nope!

Families deserve a coherent calendar, not this jittery patchwork that disrupts every routine. Start the year reasonably, end the year reasonably, and stop acting like this mess is acceptable. The calendar reflects the larger problem: the quality of education has slipped, and FCPS seems oddly proud of it.

I’m finished pretending this is fine. I won’t be voting for any incumbent who signed off on this.

Anonymous wrote:So now they took away Veterans Day and moved up the end of the year by one day. Wow. Big whoop.

I would prefer the day off in the middle of the week on November for the kids rather than one extra day in summer in June. This sucks.

Thanks elementary school parents. Hopefully karma will get you when your kids are in HS.

I'm thrilled! Having days off in the middle of the week is incredibly disruptive. Having the last day of school being in the middle of the week is stupid. This fixes both of those problems.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this really wouldn't be anyone's problem this school year if it weren't for the extra snow days that were put into effect.

we still have about 5-6 snow days remaining that will go unused.

if parents really cared about all these days off, then make sure your kids are in school every day and don't pull them out of classes!

The school board was getting complaints about the calendar, and early release, in September. Way before the snow days.

Yeah because the dumb 3 hour early releases in elementary make everything crazy. Just one example: March 20 (Friday) no school. March 25 (Weds) 3 hour early release. March 27 (Friday) end of quarter 2 hour early release followed by spring break for a full week + Monday. And today is off as well. They also had a 3 hour early release December 17, literally days before winter break. Get rid of them!

Anonymous wrote:this really wouldn't be anyone's problem this school year if it weren't for the extra snow days that were put into effect.

we still have about 5-6 snow days remaining that will go unused.

if parents really cared about all these days off, then make sure your kids are in school every day and don't pull them out of classes!

This is not true. Middle school and high school might have 3 or 4 days remaining. Elementary school is a day or less. Remember they start counting in hours the moment a single snow day occurs because they schedule exactly 180 days. Early releases and delayed openings count against the 11 snow days in hourly increments.

Anonymous wrote:this really wouldn't be anyone's problem this school year if it weren't for the extra snow days that were put into effect.

we still have about 5-6 snow days remaining that will go unused.

if parents really cared about all these days off, then make sure your kids are in school every day and don't pull them out of classes!

The school board was getting complaints about the calendar, and early release, in September. Way before the snow days.

Anonymous wrote:The county, by its own admission posted on their website, is only supposed to give five religious holidays...both eids, yom Kippur, diwali, and Christmas. Six if you count Christmas eve.

But this year they added many others that are not on their official list of holidays as defined when we first went thru this a few years back to figure out which holidays had the greatest impact on attendance. Next year, they're back to the original five.

I have no idea why they decided to add in four new religious/cultural holidays with no feedback or data only to take them away the following year. This year's calendar was a bizarre anomaly. Without any changes at all next year's calendar already has two additional five day weeks compares to this year's.

This kneejerk reaction is typical of the school board.

They created this mess and are now complaining about it. As if they can't see that the addition of the religious holidays and early releases is the reason why we get out so late and why parents are complaining about consistency.

I couldn't care less about having the religious holidays or not and I don't care about the number of five day weeks. But I just can't stand the ignorance and them acting dumbfounded as if they have no idea how this happened.

They did not add any holidays. They aligned teacher contract days with some religious observances. There were the same number of contract days as any other year, but they placed more between the first and last day of school than usual, so parents noticed them more. They usually hold 6 contract days before the first day of school and 2-3 after the last day of school. This year there were 5 before and 1 after. With the added elections, we had 11 TW/SP/SD days between the first and last day of school when last year we had 6.

Anonymous wrote:Can someone explain why kids are off today like I am 5?

Orthodox Good Friday.

this really wouldn't be anyone's problem this school year if it weren't for the extra snow days that were put into effect.

we still have about 5-6 snow days remaining that will go unused.

if parents really cared about all these days off, then make sure your kids are in school every day and don't pull them out of classes!

The county, by its own admission posted on their website, is only supposed to give five religious holidays...both eids, yom Kippur, diwali, and Christmas. Six if you count Christmas eve.

But this year they added many others that are not on their official list of holidays as defined when we first went thru this a few years back to figure out which holidays had the greatest impact on attendance. Next year, they're back to the original five.

I have no idea why they decided to add in four new religious/cultural holidays with no feedback or data only to take them away the following year. This year's calendar was a bizarre anomaly. Without any changes at all next year's calendar already has two additional five day weeks compares to this year's.

This kneejerk reaction is typical of the school board.

They created this mess and are now complaining about it. As if they can't see that the addition of the religious holidays and early releases is the reason why we get out so late and why parents are complaining about consistency.

I couldn't care less about having the religious holidays or not and I don't care about the number of five day weeks. But I just can't stand the ignorance and them acting dumbfounded as if they have no idea how this happened.

Can someone explain why kids are off today like I am 5?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So now they took away Veterans Day and moved up the end of the year by one day. Wow. Big whoop.

I would prefer the day off in the middle of the week on November for the kids rather than one extra day in summer in June. This sucks.

Thanks elementary school parents. Hopefully karma will get you when your kids are in HS.

You are sick

HS parent here who doesn't want random days off!

Anonymous wrote:So now they took away Veterans Day and moved up the end of the year by one day. Wow. Big whoop.

I would prefer the day off in the middle of the week on November for the kids rather than one extra day in summer in June. This sucks.

Thanks elementary school parents. Hopefully karma will get you when your kids are in HS.

You are sick

Fewer than half of the school weeks have five days of instructional time.

My kids have graduated, but I’d be pissed as a parent. FCPS has a very high per pupil cost at nearly $22,000 per pupil. All taxpayers should be pissed.

A lot of ya’ll are conflating teacher workdays and religious holidays. In the 2023-2024 calendar there were 9 teacher workdays/staff development days. This year there are 12. They added some of those new ones to some of the smaller religious holidays.

That’s on top of the 4 or 5 new religious holidays they added a few years ago which they never should have been able to add because none of them met the absence rate required to add a religious holiday

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So now they took away Veterans Day and moved up the end of the year by one day. Wow. Big whoop.

I would prefer the day off in the middle of the week on November for the kids rather than one extra day in summer in June. This sucks.

Thanks elementary school parents. Hopefully karma will get you when your kids are in HS.

Thats all? What the heck? What happened to the early releases? For goodness sake.

That’s not all, but the high school students aren’t as impacted by the other change which is to limit early release to eight days per year.

I count 10 early release days this year either 2 or 3 hour, not counting the one that they cancelled this month or the last day of school. So it’s not a huge change. They might just do away with the 2 hour early releases at the end of the quarters and call it a day and keep the 3 hour days, which are much more disruptive.

25-26 was supposed to have 12, now 26-27 can’t have more than eight. I obviously preferred the proposal for four, but if nothing else, this will rein in Reid’s grab for more and more time out of school.