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presumably for the same reason. folks around here - families and teachers alike - begin their summer vacation and camp plans the day after the scheduled end of the school year.
heck, the way some scheduling geniuses have it now, we've gone to school one extra day - a Monday - to end the year.
Hmmm, I don't know why this solution is any worse than any other they could have come up with. If they'd gone with Good Friday and two Saturdays, a different set of people would be inconvenienced.
As a teacher, working 50-60 hours over 5 weekdays was quite enough, and I would NOT have wanted to work any saturdays.
I wonder how many families in Wake County had non refundable travel plans for spring break? I'm willing to bet it is not a majority of families. Heaven knows I can't afford to go anywhere for spring break. But If I did have plans I couldn't change, I would just go on my vacation and not make a big deal about it.
Really? People would keep their kids home those days as a protest? What good would that do? Not going to reelect your school board representative as a result of some make up days? Just seems so petty.
The weather conditions inconvenienced a lot of people. I'm sure we will live to get over it.
The most reasonable post I've read on this topic. I can't believe people would keep their kids home just to make a point. the only people you're hurting is your kids, who will now be behind 11 days, and teachers who now have to work harder to catch your kids up on 8 days missed and another 3. I'm sure teachers appreciate it.
Send your kids or don't send them if you already had a 10 day trip to Tahiti planned over spring break, but good grief stop with the whining already. I do now know why so many entitled, whiny kids act the way the do. The apple doesn't fall far...
ohh...to be clear, my kids won't be going as some means of protest. I would agree that the concept of a "sitout" seems foreign. They won't be going because we have vacation plans that involve flights and the parents taking time off from their work that can't be so easily rearranged.
I will be new to the area, so please forgive the ignorance of this question. Why don't they tack on the days at the end of the school year?
Autumn, there's a state law that says public schools can't go past the Friday closest to June 11th and can't start earlier than the Monday closest to Aug 26th for traditional calendar options.
So in the unusual event of nearly 2 weeks out of school due to winter weather (many years we would have no snow days, or maybe 1 or 2) schools are left scrambling to try to squeeze in the state mandated 185 days OR 1,025 hours of instruction in the little time we have left before June 11th.
Different school systems made different choices how to make up the hours. Wake is a big system with schools on different calendars, but I don't know the rationale behind what they came up with. Other systems prioritized retaining Spring Break. Chapel Hill Carrboro added two days to the end of the year. School was supposed to get out June 10th, but will now get out Friday June 12th.
I get the disappointment for some, but I have a roll with the punches approach to all this.
The blow up over Good Friday caught me by surprise. Neither parent in my household gets the holiday so it matters little to us. We either take a vacation day or hire childcare for Good Friday if the kids have it off. Guess that decision is back on the table.
As for spring break, I've cancelled the plans I had made for kids that week because I can. They'll be in school. Had I bought tickets, my kids would be traveling and missing class and I wouldn't think twice about it.
No win situation for WCPSS.
The high school argument gets to me a bit. Maybe the no final exam #of missed days should be expanded for seniors. No state laws determining that.
Last edited by NoneOfThis; 03-07-2015 at 11:45 PM..
Reason: Clarification
I get the disappointment for some, but I have a roll with the punches approach to all this.
The blow up over Good Friday caught me by surprise. Neither parent in my household gets the holiday so it matters little to us. We either take a vacation day or hire childcare for Good Friday if the kids have it off. Guess that decision is back on the table.
As for spring break, I've cancelled the plans I had made for kids that week because I can. They'll be in school. Had I bought tickets, my kids would be traveling and missing class and I wouldn't think twice about it.
No win situation for WCPSS.
The high school argument gets to me a bit. Maybe the no final exam #of missed days should be expanded for seniors. No state laws determining that.
I agree with you that Good Friday was NBD to us and neither is Spring Break. I feel like my kids have had 2 spring breaks already. I also agree that no matter what WCPSS decides people will be unhappy. However, I think they may have made the decision that would most anger teachers who are already demoralized to begin with. That is of concern to me b/c unhappy and demoralized staff will hurt our schools. The State has been the culprit in the past but this came from board.
I know that there have been debates here about the fact that is does not snow often, but we get icy conditions often, maybe it is time the board builds a few snow days into the calendar to avoid some of this in the future. I think this is message that parents and employee can easily send to the board.
If you are the type who goes "I am going to vote out the BOE because they dared to mess with my vacation plans" then I would say the kind of BOE you would support is probably undesirable with regard to education. Don't mistake the education board for the tourism board.
I am glad they didn't extend the school year. Last year, when the academic year was extended, it was meaningless having the kids attend school the last few days. Nothing related to academics was covered in those days at the schools my kids attend.
I am glad the BOE took a decision that focuses on education.
I'm sorry, but just wow. They should have shut up and just gone along with Saturday school sessions. The days have to come from somewhere. Like school really is so terrible for little Jane and Billy.
As a parent I really would rather have less school overall. I know that's probably not a popular educational stance, but my kids are so much happier and focused when we have delayed openings/short days.
I don't think there's going to be a whole lotta learning going on over Spring Break for the systems that took that for make-up days and I don't think there's gonna be a whole lotta learning going on for the systems that have Saturday school (which is early release in CHCCS). I'm happy that CHCCS went with the plan keeping Spring Break and doing two Saturdays, plus adding on 2 days to the end of the year, plus full days for the days that had been delayed openings & workdays.
My older daughter's charter did something similar to Chatham County and added 15 minutes to the school day. I'm not a fan of that solution, but I imagine they did it because they draw from a large area and Saturdays wouldn't work as well. I would have rather given up Good Friday and added on a day or two to the end of the year, but they didn't ask me, so we'll do what we do.
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