Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By the way, May 3rd isn’t a made up holiday. It’s Eastern Orthodox Good Friday. While that’s my religion and I hope that people don’t insult it, I don’t believe schools need the day off for it. Most churches offer an evening service to accommodate since our entire lives prior to recently, it’s never been a school holiday.

What percentage of students are eastern orthodox, and is it a high enough percentage that a significsnt number of students will miss school that day?

That should be the standard for having these cultural days off. Otherwise, the students should just get an excused absence.

May holidays mess with AP exams. Having off penalizes many students.

I believe this is a public education and separation of church and state is a thing. We are trying to accommodate all religions when all the does is make for an inefficient and choppy calendar everyone.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is Easter different every year but every other holiday has a date?

Every other Christian holiday, that is

What other Christian holiday is there? There's Christmas and then Easter. None of the others are celebrated by schools/federal gov. And Easter is a Sunday, so you weren't going to school on it anyways.

I too wish they'd separate Easter from spring break. I'd like the first week of March please. Currently my choices are to travel with my family as we need a vacation or celebrate Easter with extended family. If they were separated I could easily do both.

Depending on which denomination you ask, any where from none to most days on the calendar. But off the top of my head the most common might be recognizing Holy Week (which right now is spring break), the season of Advent and Ash Wednesday/the season of Lent, plus for all liturgical churches All-Saints Day - all of which FCPS did note this year with the observance design challenge.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point of early release Mondays was to give elementary teachers the same amount of planning time as MS/HS teachers. It wasn't supposed to change the overall amount of planning time.

Don't elementary teachers get planning time while their class is in specials every day?

1-3 times a week they have required meetings -CLT. ES teachers have anywhere between 2-4 hours a week to plan and prepare materials, grade, respond to emails, etc. My principal cut down a meeting this year so we have 4 hours a week. Last year we had two meetings and had 3 hours.

In the past two years my DW and two of our friends have switched from teaching ES to MS. They all say they have more planning time and while they still have a lot to do, their workload is lighter than when they were in the ES.

We recently found out another friend is going to make the switch next school year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is Easter different every year but every other holiday has a date?

Every other Christian holiday, that is

What other Christian holiday is there? There's Christmas and then Easter. None of the others are celebrated by schools/federal gov. And Easter is a Sunday, so you weren't going to school on it anyways.

I too wish they'd separate Easter from spring break. I'd like the first week of March please. Currently my choices are to travel with my family as we need a vacation or celebrate Easter with extended family. If they were separated I could easily do both.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point of early release Mondays was to give elementary teachers the same amount of planning time as MS/HS teachers. It wasn't supposed to change the overall amount of planning time.

Don't elementary teachers get planning time while their class is in specials every day?

According to something the SB put out a couple years ago? A year ago? ES teachers had less planning time. They was even a tiny bit of talk about returning to early release Mondays - maybe even a survey?

When we had early release Mondays we didn't have one hour specials and Monday afternoons were often spent in meetings/PD. When the early release days went away (under Dr. Garza I believe), the new policy stated that ES teachers would get a minimum of 300 minutes, with at least 240 teacher directed and 60 for collaborative team meetings. Most principals didn't abide by that and I think some still don't.

Elementary teachers engaged in the responsibilities associated with their position on a fulltime basis shall be allowed 300 minutes of planning time per week or 600 minutes over a 2-week period. Within that time, a minimum of 60 minutes of collaborative planning time
and 240 minutes of teacher-directed planning times per week or 120 minutes of collaborative planning time and 480 minutes of teacher-directed planning times over a 2-week period will be provided. Classroom planning time is provided during art, physical education, music, and/or other instructional programming. Other certified personnel without direct classroom responsibilities may also be assigned in a manner that provides planning time. Such
assignments may only exceed 10 hours per week per position with the approval of the region assistant superintendent.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/BR9JS84E8A87/$file/R4422.11.pdf

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point of early release Mondays was to give elementary teachers the same amount of planning time as MS/HS teachers. It wasn't supposed to change the overall amount of planning time.

Don't elementary teachers get planning time while their class is in specials every day?

According to something the SB put out a couple years ago? A year ago? ES teachers had less planning time. They was even a tiny bit of talk about returning to early release Mondays - maybe even a survey?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point of early release Mondays was to give elementary teachers the same amount of planning time as MS/HS teachers. It wasn't supposed to change the overall amount of planning time.

Don't elementary teachers get planning time while their class is in specials every day?

1-3 times a week they have required meetings -CLT. ES teachers have anywhere between 2-4 hours a week to plan and prepare materials, grade, respond to emails, etc. My principal cut down a meeting this year so we have 4 hours a week. Last year we had two meetings and had 3 hours.

That’s because that came down from Dr Reid. 240 minutes of teacher directed planning time a week is what you are supposed to have, but a lot of principals were ignoring that SB policy.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It would be so much better if it was nowhere near Easter. So expensive to travel.

Isn't it more expensive to travel because schools have off? If it moved to a different time than that would be the most expensive. Supply and demand.

Decoupling from Easter wouldn’t necessarily make another time more expensive if many other districts across the country continue to tie it to Easter.

Most school districts in the country have spring break not tied to Easter. It is usually earlier in March.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The point of early release Mondays was to give elementary teachers the same amount of planning time as MS/HS teachers. It wasn't supposed to change the overall amount of planning time.

Don't elementary teachers get planning time while their class is in specials every day?

1-3 times a week they have required meetings -CLT. ES teachers have anywhere between 2-4 hours a week to plan and prepare materials, grade, respond to emails, etc. My principal cut down a meeting this year so we have 4 hours a week. Last year we had two meetings and had 3 hours.

Anonymous wrote:The point of early release Mondays was to give elementary teachers the same amount of planning time as MS/HS teachers. It wasn't supposed to change the overall amount of planning time.

Don't elementary teachers get planning time while their class is in specials every day?