Maryland governor uses executive order schools to start later, is this good or bad, should other states follow suit? (school, grades)
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Given what the neurological and psychological studies on teenagers show - he would have been backed up if he required high schools to start later in the day - 9 or 9.30.
Those studies are garbage anyway.
If you start the school day later, then the kids out making dumb decisions stay out even later.
The studies assume that the kid would go to bed the same time, which we all know won't happen.
As I described here, it's not really possible to have school start after Labor Day AND end before Memorial Day AND have time off for Thanksgiving/winter/spring breaks (assuming a 180-day school year).
They should take away the winter/spring breaks.
You just had 3 weeks off for Christmas a month ago.
It can be done. One of the issues is the expansion of breaks. Easter (Spring) Break used to be Good Friday through Easter Monday. Now, in many systems it's as long or long than Christmas (Winter) Break.
In my former system we had only one full 20 school day month a year, usually March. There were in service days, Primary
and General Election Days, Yom Kippur (in a system where the number of Jewish students and staff became miniscule) as well as one or two days in October for the state Teacher's Association conference off.
These were in addition to the normal Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc. days off. Veteran's and Columbus Days were typically teacher report in service days with no students reporting.
Maryland State Department of Education mandated a minimum of 10 in service days with problematic, which my system was, systems required to have more, which we did. Two of the additional ones were negotiated as no pay.
Why do public schools close for Jewish holidays anyway? I thought public school is no religion.
You could pick up another 5 days right there.
And stop giving pointless holidays like Columbus Day, MLK Day, and Election Day off.
One voting station should not shut down an entire school.
And schedule teacher conference days for the weekend.
As an educator and a parent, I loved the schedule we had in Hawai'i when I lived and worked there. Kids started very end of July/very beginning of August and breaks coincided with the end of quarter/semester. So fall break happened at the end of 1st quarter, winter break at the end of 2nd quarter, spring break was the end of 3rd quarter and summer was the end of 4th quarter. Quarters had the same number of days.
Starting at the end of July works in a place where the weather in July isn't much different from the weather in September. Most districts in the US (not all, it's not legally mandated everywhere) have around 180 "student" days (when students are present). Typically, the vacations aren't markedly different in terms of how much time off kids get- it just depends on when it falls. When I first started working in Hawai'i, they got 1 week at fall break, 3 weeks at winter break, and 2 weeks at summer break. They also have a number of non-student days throughout the year. This made for what seemed like a longer year (start end of July, get out middle of June), but the reality is that they got the same number of days off as many other districts. They were just spread out differently. I really liked that schedule. They voted to go to shorter breaks and get out earlier in May because of the desire of teachers to be able to participate in PD classes and opportunities in the summer.
I know people normally think of "June/July/August" as being the time kids should get off school, but I leave it to the districts and communities to see what works best in their states. I think it's ridiculous to have some executive order around it. It's not like schools who start earlier are taking away break time from kids.
As for the "early/late" start to the day, our district recently moved the high school start time back and hour and moved the middle school back and hour a year later. It seems to be working out just fine with sports. They moved some of the after school (non sports) activities before school, though, which means the start time isn't any later for those who want to participate in those things.
I would hate a schedule like that.
Most good schools pile up homework/tests during a week off from school.
I used to dread "holidays" because they were worse than school itself.
The only way you really relax is when the school year ends.
That's true to an extent, but they could have the elementary schools on the early shift and the high schools on the late shift. The reason they do not do that is sports and jobs for the older kids.
The research shows that teenagers actually should be sleeping later, but schools ignore research anyway.
The research is highly flawed though.
Their assumptions are that teenagers want to stay up until midnight, so if they are to get 8 hours of sleep, school has to start at 9 am.
But if school started later, they would stay up until 2 am instead.
There's academic research and on the ground research. Here's what I saw on the ground at my high school when we went from a 7:40 start time to 8:45, the latest in the system.
We were told the change was due to bus scheduling but my little voice always told me me it was advocated for by school based administration because of a conversation I had with the Principal.
Anyway. At the 8:45 start time the same kids were late every day, the same parents dropped their kids off late every day, the same kids couldn't function for the first two periods every day, the same teachers were late every day and the same four administrators couldn't get their asses in on time every day.
The conversation was the Principal asking me what I thought about a later start time. I told him the same kids, staff, etc. would be late. I then asked him if a later start would mean he and the three Vice Principals would be able to show up before 3rd Period.
I guess I now understand why he and I had issues.
This is totally true.
I think school should start at 4 am and end at noon.
That way, you'd stop all kids that have substance abuse problems because if they are going to go do drugs, they would need to do so in the evening in order to avoid falling asleep in class and there's way more good people out during late evening than 2 am.
Maryland has a mechanism to request waivers for days missed for natural disasters. There has to be a declaration by the Governor of a State of Emergency, such as today for the almost blizzard, and the local school system (Maryland schools are County based) has to request the waiver from Maryland State Department of Education.
Some systems get an almost automatic approval while others have to jump through hoops. My (former) system would sometimes "forget" to request the waiver or, more often, ask for fewer days than authorized (10 days qualify for waivers and only request 2 days). It was also one of the systems that had hoops to jump through.
The decision to close schools is not made lightly. As mentioned by someone else, the decision sometimes hinges on the free meals program. In many cases the only meal some kids get is at school. Many elementary schools in my former system (70% of school population on FARM) send food bags home on the weekend with the kids so they don't go two days with no or minimal food. That makes the decision to close on a Monday or Friday problematic.
In my 30+ years there were a few times we would be off for a couple days, get called in on a two hour delay with a two hour early dismissal just to feed the kids. We'd then be off a couple more days because the roads were still almost impassable.
Most states abuse the State of Emergency edicts though.
I see states call that for 2 inches of snow.
Like learn how to govern and buy salt in advance instead of doing nothing and taking all the emergency money to run your next campaign.
Also, calling people in on a 2 hour delay only to dismiss them 2 hours early is asinine. If they can get in on a 2 hour delay, then keep them for a full day.
If the weather has stopped, is no more dangerous to send them home after a full day vs 2 hours later.
If public schools were required to recognize anything as an "act of God", wouldn't that violate the establishment clause?
There is really a very simple solution to all this. Make the school day 20 minutes longer and the school year five days shorter.
Where, by the way is it carved in stone than an education is impossible to attain in less than 180 classroom days? If a child is sick, and misses a day, that day is easily made up. Why can't a whole classroom make up a missed day?
In high school, the day is not easily made up.
There were many times in high school I went in sick because the prospect of taking 3 weeks to catch up for 1 missed day was too unappealing.
Interesting this is the 1990 legislation in California based on the article I posted above:
According to the California Department of Education (CDE), there is, “a requirement for 180 instructional days.” However, “state law permits a school district to waive that requirement and file a claim for average daily attendance (ADA) in the case of an emergency condition that causes a district to close, like a wildfire (Education Code Sections 41422 and 46392, and California Code of Regulations, Title 5, Section 428),” Dr. Churchill explained.
I guess the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake probably helped to craft the legislation.
This makes sense as no principal or superintendent would intentionally want their schools to miss a day of education unless its extremely unavoidable. Its also not right to force schools to scramble to makeup when they are "forced" to close due to county or state declaring an emergency in other words those in charge of schools might not be able to keep schools open even if they wanted to(I.e in the Lilac Fire and Thomas fires many of the schools had to evacuate due to fire approaching them, and area was under official evacuation alert which prevents them from holding school again for days)(this is not so different from eastern states declaring travel bans during extreme snow storms which can last nearly a week at times). The basic contract law concept in almost every other setting including for Uni/colleges have an exception clause to cover such events why should k-12 public schools be any different? Of courses they could voluntarily choose to help their students make up for any learning lost due to the unexpected interruption as well as lunch programs they might have to miss. As I mentioned and the above poster mentioned having a real contingency plan for missed lesson plans (i.e home packets, online, etc) and or a plan for extending the school day and each period an appropriate amount in the same term to help teachers make up time in covering coursework that were interrupted due to the unexpected disruption. Its much better than garnishing scheduled breaks, holidays, weekends or end of school year in another semester which students even if they show up won't concentrate on studying or just be watching movies whole day. Interestingly Unexpected cancellations in California only happened very few times when I am growing up and in recent years. When it does happen its usually due to severe storms that hit during the winter which causes downed trees, flooded roads, mudslides and power outages, though occasionally extremely thick fog, smoke from wildfires, extreme air pollution, and the freak low elevation snowfall can do too.
It appears in California a waiver is guaranteed in such circumstances but not so in many other states I guess including Maryland as the above poster mentioned some districts easy to waiver others have hoops to jump through. I heard even neighboring Nevada has issues with Las Vegas school district cancelling a day of school due to a once in three decades snowfall a few years ago. Really you don't forgive them for such a freak once in a school life time occurrence. This kind of cancellation it would had been forgiven and waived no questions asked.
It is actually really easy to makeup days though. Simply hold school on Sundays instead. Most school sports are only on Saturdays, so there would be no conflict.
Except in areas near the Great Lakes where they get 6 feet of snow from 1 storm, the idea of a travel ban for a week for a foot of snow is ridiculous. The idea of a travel ban at all is insane, but if it is essential, it should be 12-24 hours at most.
Why do students get to just mail in effort because they think they should get a snow day? Teachers should count snow day work triple as much because it shows the ACTUAL effort the student cares about their work. If a student gives full effort on a snow day, they obviously take their studies seriously.
It's ridiculous to close school in Nevada for such a once in a lifestorm storm. The teachers should bring cots and sleep in their classrooms and the students who all live in the immediate area can walk to school. I doubt Nevada got 20 inches of snow.
Teachers want to be treated like professionals. Then you sleep over in your classroom. If not, you're not a professional.
Maryland schools, with only a couple exceptions a couple or three decades ago, always started in August, usually the last week. It's only the last ten or so years the start started getting pushed back into the third or even second week of the month.
Part of the reason is the number of mandated inservice days started to increase. The lower your school system ranking the more days were mandated. It used to be a minimum for all systems of ten days.
Plus, Maryland has some weird days off. Always closed for Election Day. Closed for the Maryland State Education Association conference, that used to be two days then was cut to one a few years ago.
A lot of systems took Jewish holidays, a couple have now added Islamic ones.
The reality is that not one month except March in the school year did the scheduled days equal a full month of school days.
My system wasn't mean so much as run by morons with intense political meddling. It's also the second worst system in the state while being the largest, wealthiest and best educated majority minority system in the US. Yes, it beats Atlanta.
Maryland is such a weird state to be closed for Election Day because almost all elections in the state are total blowouts. There could be rampant voter fraud and the Democrats would probably still win by double digits.
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