“ I really feel for the teachers that live in other counties. The School Board fixed the Spring Break issue, but now we are starting before any other county and also ending the latest. ”

+1
This blows a hole in their “well we just added them for county consistency with neighbors” legal defense.

Anonymous wrote:I would bet that teens would be happy to have a 2 week break at the end of each quarter because that would give them more time to recover/catch up during the school year.

No, they wouldn't.

That would screw up their summers AND their sports/activities/clubs/rehearsals.

For those with summer jobs, it would completely cut into that schedule.

It would also make it very difficult for teens to participate in any summer programs as most of them start the middle of June.

Do you know many teens?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:PP here - also - October sucks. They couldn't have figured out a way to align Diwali with the end of the quarter instead of having 3 Mondays off PLUS Yom Kippur? Or sticking with their normal end of the quarter TWD the Monday before election day would have been fine too.

Ugh.

Pssst.

FCPS does not decide which day Diwali occurs on.

I mean, get real.

I am as anti the current school board as they come, but getting mad at them for not moving Diwali and Yom Kippur is a tad over the top.

Holidays on those days is ridiculous. We know that they wanted to do this last year and were told that they couldn't because the attendance data does not show an abnormal number of absences on those days justifying having the day off. Leave them as O days, don't allow tests of assignments on or around those days.

Anonymous wrote:I am a working parent and don’t see it as an f u … it’s not like I have the summer off {{shrug}}.

Same here. Fewer weeks that I have to schedule summer camps. They can do SACC on the random days off.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's nuts. Days off should be grouped as much as possible to minimize the number of short weeks. It's frankly easier to deal with a few long weekends than a million random four-day weeks.

If can get the religion’s to move their Holy days to Mondays and Fridays, it will work.

They should have aligned the teacher workdays with the Holy Days.

I really feel for the teachers that live in other counties. The School Board fixed the Spring Break issue, but now we are starting before any other county and also ending the latest.

This calendar was built to make Omeish happy. She was giddy last night and everyone else (staff included) were only resigned to how terrible this calendar is.

This is not true. There is a woman who is very involved in the Democratic party circles, a fairly decent sized donor, who really led the charge to add religious holidays to the calendar. She has been working on this for years (she is a Jewish woman and very involved in her synagogue as well as an FCPS parent who is very frustrated by what she has seen as a lack of attention paid to "O" days when it comes to her kids being out of school on religious holidays). She basically declared war against the members of the current school board who voted against adding additional religious holidays. She really put in the time and the effort and pulled the strings that she needed to, and got it done.

Anonymous wrote:Why the f are Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur and Diwali holidays now?

What they should have done if they are adding holidays is move some of the teacher workdays to June 12-14, and end the year for students on June 9th.

I would bet that teens would be happy to have a 2 week break at the end of each quarter because that would give them more time to recover/catch up during the school year.

Anonymous wrote:PP here - also - October sucks. They couldn't have figured out a way to align Diwali with the end of the quarter instead of having 3 Mondays off PLUS Yom Kippur? Or sticking with their normal end of the quarter TWD the Monday before election day would have been fine too.

Ugh.

Pssst.

FCPS does not decide which day Diwali occurs on.

I mean, get real.

I am as anti the current school board as they come, but getting mad at them for not moving Diwali and Yom Kippur is a tad over the top.

Most teens don't take AP exams. Your post reeks of privilege.

Most low income people prefer school to go as long as possible into June for childcare issues.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a working parent and don’t see it as an f u … it’s not like I have the summer off {{shrug}}.

Same. I'm a working parent and I actually think summers are TOO long. Specially for teenagers and working parents.

What are you talking about?

You don't have teens if you think summer is too long for teens. It is way to short.

Put in one summer program in June-July, and sports practices starting in August, teens often only end up with one or two weeks of unscheduled summer break.

Put yourself in other parents shoes a bit...

Working parents WORK in the summer, which means many teens spend their summer days home alone.

Parents of teens don't worry about that. If you had teens you would know that half of the work day is spent sleeping in.

The working parent thing is an elementary kid issue. Not a teen issue.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a working parent and don’t see it as an f u … it’s not like I have the summer off {{shrug}}.

Same. I'm a working parent and I actually think summers are TOO long. Specially for teenagers and working parents.

What are you talking about?

You don't have teens if you think summer is too long for teens. It is way to short.

Put in one summer program in June-July, and sports practices starting in August, teens often only end up with one or two weeks of unscheduled summer break.

DP
From past posts on these boards I had the impression that most families thought the summer was too long (learning slide, pools are dead in August anyhow, kids get board…).

Most do. OP just has a kid who plays a fall sport. Not our problem!

We are talking about teens.

Not elementary kids.

Parents of teens prefer that school ends shortly after AP exams, shortly after memorial day and no later than the first week of June.

They aren't too worried about the pool at that age.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am a working parent and don’t see it as an f u … it’s not like I have the summer off {{shrug}}.

Same. I'm a working parent and I actually think summers are TOO long. Specially for teenagers and working parents.

What are you talking about?

You don't have teens if you think summer is too long for teens. It is way to short.

Put in one summer program in June-July, and sports practices starting in August, teens often only end up with one or two weeks of unscheduled summer break.

DP
From past posts on these boards I had the impression that most families thought the summer was too long (learning slide, pools are dead in August anyhow, kids get board…).

Parents of little kids might.

Parents of teens do not think summer is too long.

Terrible calendar that makes a joke of their equity agenda. Email the SB and complain!!!!!!!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Summer vacation is down to 9 weeks now?

That is what it seems like - I wonder how the teachers feel about that.

where is everyone getting 9 weeks of summer vacation? They get out this year on 6/10, so with an 8/22 start that's 10 weeks. 3 weeks in June, 4 in July, 3 in August.

I don't love the veterans day holiday only because the traditional M/T 4 day weekend for election day is much more conducive to a trip or something than having Tuesday and Friday off...

I am normally in favor of a long winter break since I have a lot of family across the country but this year might have been a good year to explore a shorter break, based on how the holidays fall.

They are talking about the following summer. Summer of 2023 is now down to 9 weeks with the 6/16 end date.

Oh. I guess that makes sense, although since it seems like they go back to the drawing board and come up with new factors to consider every year, they could easily decide to start on 8/28/23 and stick with the 10 weeks of summer...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:That's nuts. Days off should be grouped as much as possible to minimize the number of short weeks. It's frankly easier to deal with a few long weekends than a million random four-day weeks.

If can get the religion’s to move their Holy days to Mondays and Fridays, it will work.

They should have aligned the teacher workdays with the Holy Days.

I really feel for the teachers that live in other counties. The School Board fixed the Spring Break issue, but now we are starting before any other county and also ending the latest.

This calendar was built to make Omeish happy. She was giddy last night and everyone else (staff included) were only resigned to how terrible this calendar is.

When you choose to work in one school district and live in another, that’s how it goes. I don’t seen how it’s different then any other working parent. They were lucky the spring breaks worked out for this one calendar year.