I thought the 2021-2022 calendar was already set.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just saw that on today's SB meeting, they added a new calendar C option that removes the new 4 religious holidays? It also moves spring break to a fixed week.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/BXTJNC4DF7C7/$file/2020-12-03%20SB%20Work%20Session%20Calendar%20Presentation%20Final.pdf

At this point I'd rather they just settle on something and keep it roughly the same from year to year.

Good, those explicitly religious holidays should not be in the school calendar.

Agreed. Schools should be in session during all explicitly religious holidays. Just make sure that when your child misses tests or other assignments on Christmas or Easter, you are prepared to contact the school to advocate for them EVERY YEAR because the law says observing a religious holiday means they should not be penalized.

Well, Easter is always on a Sunday, and I'm not aware of any public school that's open on Sundays.

As for Christmas, FCPS doesn't have a Christmas holiday. It has a 2 week Winter Break.

A winter break that just HAPPENS to ALWAYS straddle the Christmas holiday. Such a coincidence. I apologize, those of us who celebrate non-Christian holidays should just shut up and be grateful you allow us to live amongst you and send our children to your schools. We apologize for asking for our faith and our children to be treated with respect. Please forgive us.

AND New Year's Day too!

Winter break just HAPPENS to ALWAYS straddle the solar-calendar-based holiday. Such a coincidence. I apologize, those of us who celebrate lunar-calendar-based New Year holidays should just shut up and be grateful you allow us to live amongst you and send our children to your schools. We apologize for asking for our culture and our children to be treated with respect. Please forgive us.

Anonymous wrote:We should not be peppering a calendar with religious holidays to the point that it extends the year an entire week.

Who was even sent these surveys?

Why not? I'm fine with a long summer break that allows camps and travel and downtime, but I could easily do all that in one less week. Summer brain drain is real... it's too much time off in one chunk. If it was up to me I'd add a week to spring break, add a 2-week break in October, and get summer break down to something like 8 weeks which is still plenty long.

I think of course it depends on your job whether you find this desirable... how much vacation time you have to allow for 3-4 day weekends, if you can work remotely, if you can afford a daycare/camp program on the occasional day or week of school break, if you have flexibilty at both work and home to shift your schedule certain weeks (e.g. work four 10-hour days in a week when your kids have a day off, or nine 9-hour days across two weeks), and so on.

As someone with that flexibility, its easy for me to advocate for spreading the breaks out more through the year and shortening the summer... it's better for the kids academically not to have such a long summer break. But logistically and family-stress-wise, that's not always the case for everyone. But there's some pretty obvious benefits to shortening the summer, even if it will require some families to adapt.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just saw that on today's SB meeting, they added a new calendar C option that removes the new 4 religious holidays? It also moves spring break to a fixed week.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/BXTJNC4DF7C7/$file/2020-12-03%20SB%20Work%20Session%20Calendar%20Presentation%20Final.pdf

At this point I'd rather they just settle on something and keep it roughly the same from year to year.

Good, those explicitly religious holidays should not be in the school calendar.

Agreed. Schools should be in session during all explicitly religious holidays. Just make sure that when your child misses tests or other assignments on Christmas or Easter, you are prepared to contact the school to advocate for them EVERY YEAR because the law says observing a religious holiday means they should not be penalized.

Well, Easter is always on a Sunday, and I'm not aware of any public school that's open on Sundays.

As for Christmas, FCPS doesn't have a Christmas holiday. It has a 2 week Winter Break.

A winter break that just HAPPENS to ALWAYS straddle the Christmas holiday. Such a coincidence. I apologize, those of us who celebrate non-Christian holidays should just shut up and be grateful you allow us to live amongst you and send our children to your schools. We apologize for asking for our faith and our children to be treated with respect. Please forgive us.

Anonymous wrote:I’m always thinking ahead, guys - my husband wanted to teach in a high needs school somewhere I told him he could find that in FCPS and he had to teach here to be on the same schedule as our kids

Doesn’t everyone realize that’s a possibility if you’re not in the same district as your kids?

That sounds like a personal family problem and not something that should be considered when making a schedule that's best for 180,000 kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I just saw that on today's SB meeting, they added a new calendar C option that removes the new 4 religious holidays? It also moves spring break to a fixed week.

https://go.boarddocs.com/vsba/fairfax/Board.nsf/files/BXTJNC4DF7C7/$file/2020-12-03%20SB%20Work%20Session%20Calendar%20Presentation%20Final.pdf

At this point I'd rather they just settle on something and keep it roughly the same from year to year.

Good, those explicitly religious holidays should not be in the school calendar.

Agreed. Schools should be in session during all explicitly religious holidays. Just make sure that when your child misses tests or other assignments on Christmas or Easter, you are prepared to contact the school to advocate for them EVERY YEAR because the law says observing a religious holiday means they should not be penalized.

Well, Easter is always on a Sunday, and I'm not aware of any public school that's open on Sundays.

As for Christmas, FCPS doesn't have a Christmas holiday. It has a 2 week Winter Break.

Welp. Just put down a big deposit for a bucket list Spring Break 2022 vacation, ignorant of the fact that FCPS was considering detaching spring break from Easter. Oh well.

Anonymous wrote:While I understand the inclusion of Jewish Holidays, It doesn’t make any sense to recognize the religious holidays of some and not of others. Just make a wide variety of religious holidays test-free so that students can take off if they need to.

Calendar C makes the most sense.

Zero religious affiliation.
Spring Break is even detached from Easter (although I wish they’d make the fixed week the last week of March or first week of April instead)

Plus they get out a week earlier

And while we’re at it, let’s shorten the whole year since we aren’t doing snow days anymore.

That is already the policy in FCPS. Do you know how many tests my now-HS students have missed on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur over the last 12 years? Too many to count. And do you know how many battles I've had with their respective schools? Same answer. The policy doesn't work and my kids are made to feel like slackers when they talk to their teachers about this on the front end and I'm made to feel like a nag when I deal it with it on the back end. I get that you can't relate to this because your holidays are sacred in the eyes of the school calendar and therefore you get what the big deal is, but it's a big deal to a lot of us.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other issue is if they adopt Calendar C it will not match Loudoun, PW or Arlington. So staff will have different breaks than there kids. All of the calendars should align.

I don’t think this should be a factor. We start at different times and have different winter breaks and thanksgiving breaks and teacher workdays and somehow the world doesn’t end.

It should be a factor when other districts adopted schedules based off the original plans of FCPS

C isn't too bad I can live with a fixed Spring Break, although I wish it was the first week of April. Weather still tends to be crappy in mid-March, for those who can't travel. Nicer weather would be nice to take advantage of local parks and outdoor activities.

I do not want spring break mid March when it’s cold and 0 chance of cherry blossoms. It’s also still miserable in many travel spots. Just make it April!

I’m always thinking ahead, guys - my husband wanted to teach in a high needs school somewhere I told him he could find that in FCPS and he had to teach here to be on the same schedule as our kids

Doesn’t everyone realize that’s a possibility if you’re not in the same district as your kids?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other issue is if they adopt Calendar C it will not match Loudoun, PW or Arlington. So staff will have different breaks than there kids. All of the calendars should align.

Why must we align? Parks& Rec have camps during spring brk.

I totally disagree with aligning with other districts. If we stagger, we get better travel deals from local airports.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The other issue is if they adopt Calendar C it will not match Loudoun, PW or Arlington. So staff will have different breaks than there kids. All of the calendars should align.

I don’t think this should be a factor. We start at different times and have different winter breaks and thanksgiving breaks and teacher workdays and somehow the world doesn’t end.

As a teacher in FCPS, with kids in APS, I think they should align. It doesn't have to be identical, but have different Spring Breaks and Winter Breaks would not be great (and yes, right now they are aligned).

Anonymous wrote:The other issue is if they adopt Calendar C it will not match Loudoun, PW or Arlington. So staff will have different breaks than there kids. All of the calendars should align.

I don’t think this should be a factor. We start at different times and have different winter breaks and thanksgiving breaks and teacher workdays and somehow the world doesn’t end.