The AJC reports that the DeKalb School Board voted this morning to require students to attend school on February 18 and 21st to make up days lost to the Great SnOMG of 2011.
Awesome snow pic from our Eye on the (Snowy) Street thread. Courtesy of Kate!
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Interesting that Dekalb county is putting such a high priority on our kids’ education while CSD is not.
I worry that February and March will bring more inclement weather (March is usually our snowiest month!), and then what will we do? We’ll be sorry we didn’t make up these 5 days during the February break, because we won’t have anywhere else to make up days. I don’t think spring break is an option, in part because the high school band is going to Chiapas, Mexico and I don’t think they can eliminate that trip. And tacking days onto the end of the year doesn’t help our CRCT or SAT scores.
CSD had opted not to decrease the number of days the students will be in school this year, so actually had 4 extra days “built-in”. Kids n CSD were scheduled to be in school 180 days, but the State only required 176 this year. Dekalb decreased their number of days in school to 176 this year, according to their school calendar, so they do not have a choice… they must make up the days.
Actually, this only involves two make up days: Friday, February 18th and Monday, February 21st.
Still more than the one day we are making up!
Geez…sure would be nice if I looked at a calendar before I posted, huh??
No, no, please. Sigh.
Yes, it is true that 2 is more than 1. But that does not mean that DeKalb is putting more of a priority on kids’ education.
We have a competent, responsible administration and board. We also have flexibity since we are a charter system. DeKalb has, well, umm, issues. Their Superintendent obviously has other priorities than the kids. Let’s not use DeKalb as a model of good decision-making.
Besides, CSD is the most sane, well-run school system that I know.
Right.
Their Superintendent obviously has other priorities than the kids.
_______________________________
Hey, all that money isn’t going to spend itself, so she’s got to take care of bidness, you know.
Besides, parents who are serious about their children’s education spent the snow days teaching their children math and science. Not letting their kids waste those days sledding or building snowmen.
Whaaaat???? Children outside? Having.. what do you call it??? FUN???
Not in my house… not when there are flash cards to run through.
Today’s BIG news out of DeKalb County Schools is the reassignment of principals, assistant principals, and teachers suspected of being involved in cheating in an effort to boost CRCT scores. This is a step in the right direction, and well ahead of APS. Of course, this wasn’t even an issue for CSD.
http://www.ajc.com/news/dekalb/dekalb-removes-24-educators-817787.html
So, a little off topic but here goes… I’m a “rising” CSD parent (my oldest will be in Pre-K in the fall) and could someone please explain all of the vacation breaks on the published school calendars? A whole week each for Fall break, Thanksgiving break, Winter break, and Spring break, plus two whole weeks for Holiday break over Christmas/Hanukkah. I don’t remember ever getting this much time off of school, even in college. What is the deal and what do parents do with their kids if they have to work? I see that the school year is a little longer to accommodate all the vacation time and I’m not concerned about a lack of teaching time, but goodness that’s a lot of breaks to have to scramble for child care!
there are camps sponsored by Decatur Rec and other private entities (not sure about Pre-K).
I think part of the idea is that to give teachers a real break will help them regain/retain the high energy levels needed for teaching kids. There is a lot of varying opinion on how well different families like this schedule (this is the first year of the new schedule). If it helps keep the teachers motivated and energized, and cuts down on a too long summer (I always got bored as a kid), I’m for continuing the schedule.
I think that having several breaks instead of one long summer vacation not only prevents burnout during the school year but also helps the kids’ knowledge retention over the summer. A lot of school systems are switching to this model. My children have responded very well.
I adore my students and they also take tons of time, energy and patience. I teach over 100 teenagers a day and I teach my heart out- full throttle. Teaching has a high burnout rate and for me these breaks are refreshing.
Don’t you get the entire summer off?
oh no you didn’t!
As a working mom without a lot of extra money I love having more breaks. I can come up with money for several camps throughout the year much easier then having to pay for the whole summer. I dont really understand the complaints from working parents. I find it really difficult and expensive to come up with child care for 8 weeks in a row. The kids love having more breaks to look forward and I think its keeping them more motivated as well. It keeps our teachers happy also. Sounds like a winner all around for most.
How could anyone compare CSD to Dekalb…the kids will be fine with 1 make up !!! Getting old…
Yes he did!
I can take it!
Yep, the whole summer! And I’ll be honest- I love every minute of it! Summers are part of why I left the corporate world and started teaching. I love the flexibility. But before you get all excited . . .
Let’s see… The first 2 summers I completed my teaching certification (I was originally a temporary, high need certification), then 2 graduate education degrees (about 3 years each), finished certification in a new content area, then went to IB training, yadda yadda . . . get the picture? I’m in a training program right now and just signed up for a new one this summer. It never ends!
Summers are how teachers stay educated . . . and get sunburned. It’s a win:win.
Ok I should have made clear — I wasn’t trying to attack you or anything, I was just surprised to hear that teaching has a high burnout rate because, in general, they do get the summer off. I certainly don’t begrudge anyone wanting an extra day off here and there to refresh. Thanks for the good-spirited response.
HS parent perspective on the breaks in the school year:
1) good for teachers = good for all of us
2) some families will go on really cool vacations every break
3) some families will do fun stuff a couple of days, but parents will work part of the week and kids will do whatever kids do
4) for some families it will be like any other week – parents work each day – and kids will do whatever kids do
So, goody for those in the #2 category, but not so great for the rest. It seems like a good opportunity for things like SAT prep and driving training that kids normally squeeze into after school or Saturday, often at the expense of other things like music, drama or sports. This is going to mean somebody stepping up – these things won’t happen on their own. Decatur Rec fills the void in the younger grades, but I think CSD (maybe with help from DEF) has some obligation to enable activities for HS age (such as making the building available for SAT prep and drivers ed as an example).
Good point that there’s currently a lot of options over the spring break for little kids but not so much for preteens and teens. Of course, the little kids are a high priority because they cannot be left alone while parents, most of whom have only 10 work days worth of leave per year = 2 weeks counting weekends, support their family. (And remember guys, if parents aren’t working, they cannot afford Decatur mortgages and taxes, and our real estate values drop and local businesses aren’t patronized as much. It’s great that some families can afford Decatur prices with just one parent working but there’s not enough of those families to support Decatur real estate values and taxes.).
Preteens and teens may be able to stay at home alone during break weeks but is that ideal? And this is the age group that often has their previously SAHMs going back to work full- or part-time because they see college expenses looming before them. (Loans and scholarships are getting tighter and tighter). Agree completely that it would be nice if CSD and DEF stepped up with some really cool stuff for that age group. Teachers who needed to earn extra money during the break would have that opportunity. Decatur Rec would be another good partner but some kids have outgrown their interest in traditional camps. Half-day service projects might be a good idea–noon to 5 PM. Teens love to sleep in late, the high schoolers need community service hours, and they could walk to the activity if the meeting point was in Decatur.
If anyone in CSD, DEF, Decatur Rec, other providers is interested in this, leave a contact number and maybe some of us parents could contact you off-line.
Edits to above:
1) First sentence should have referred to week-long breaks in general, not just spring break
2) Last sentence should have said to leave a contact number or email address
And perspective of parent of a child with a learning disability:
The breaks are not good for her. She has a hard enough time keeping up–but being off every few weeks (T-giving, xmas, snow week, another week coming up) she feels like she just can’t get a handle on anything right now. Every time she starts to get the hang of something, there’s a break and she loses focus.
And as a working parent, it’s a lot easier for me to take a day off here and there than to take a whole week off. But you can’t please everybody, obviously. Still, I worry that the parents who are lobbying for these breaks because they can afford the cool trips are a lot louder than the working stiffs who scramble for childcare or just leave their kids at home alone.
I also find a day here and there easier to take off than big blocks of time. People who work part-time or have recently taken a job don’t have the full 10 days/year of accumulated leave earned yet. One 5-day break can put you behind in the leave bank. Then you don’t have leave ready for when your kids are unexpectedly sick and you have to stay home with them. And/or you may have a big conference or other work event scheduled around the time of the break so you can’t take the whole time off, no matter how much leave you have. Not everyone has the kind of job that is mostly computer-based and can be done from home.
However, at least one other poster did say that week-long breaks were easier for him/her than are scattered one-days. So it depends on the work situation and it’s indeed hard to please everyone. But, in planning a schedule, I would like the impact on teachers, instruction, and family stress to be taken into account more than vacations because those issues affect the student learning the most. Public school educators have such unique schedules and leave situations that they do not always understand the pressures of working parents with more typical schedules and leave. (That is NOT to say that educators have an easier situation….I could not do what they do every day in the classroom and what they have to do in the evenings and over weekends to prepare and review/grade. It’s just different and not comparable.)
The only difference in the current CSD schedule from the previous one is that vacations are arranged differently. Working parents still have to find childcare for long stretches of time on both models (and camps often shut down late in the summer — it was hard to find childcare for that last week before school started on the old model).
There certainly could be more options for the middle/high school set but hasn’t that always been the case? Unless you have the big bucks to send your kid to overnight camp somewhere, there are few local options.
To the PreK parent who originally started this thread — many camps do not offer child care for 4 year olds, but I know many families who get together to provide childcare during that week by rotating days off and taking care of each other’s kids.
Hopefully now that the schedule has been in place for a year, there will be more options for all of us.
There is a difference between one long break and several short ones. Have you ever tried to get a job for a week? HS kids can get jobs in the summer, but not for one week here and there
Ditto for internships, gifted programs like Duke’s, and counselor-in-training programs.
We have to be careful about being too critical of parents’ concerns, e.g. accusing them of wanting the schools to “babysit” their kids or caring more about vacation than instruction. Parents who have only elementary school children don’t understand the issues that come up with children once they get beyond the Circus Camp stage but still shouldn’t be left home alone for weeks at a time. You can sit there and think “You’ll see…..” but by the time those parents get there, they’ve forgotten their original perspective. Meanwhile, parents of older children forget what it was like to have younger children and their issues, e.g. wanting more time for free play, family trips, classic summer. And lifetime school employees don’t realize what it’s like to be employed on a work schedule that is not shaped by the school calendar.
What about some kind of clearinghouse for casual household help? As a childless homeowner, I can see hiring teenagers during school breaks to do things that are hard for me to get around to, e.g., washing windows, cleaning gutters, digging out some new flower beds, turning over the vegetable patch and getting it ready for spring, etc. Although it often seems like Decatur is chock-full of families, there are also plenty of empty-nesters and senior citizens who could use some trustworthy, cheap labor now and then.
Maybe a couple of teens could even plan and establish such a clearinghouse, as a service project. Figure out how the “workers” and the “employers” could register and get matched up, etc.
love this idea!
First Baptist runs a great afterschool program loaded with lots of activities and enthusiastic young adults to supervise. They take Pre-K-5th grad regular Afterschool Program. I have three children there – the youngest is in Pre-K. They have been very happy there and enjoy the occasional “Camp” days or weeks during the breaks and summer. Check them out.
Smalltowngal- I hope Chris Billingsley is reading this. That’s a great idea! If he doesn’t respond I recommend you email him IDE idea. He’s at DHS.
DEM- No problem, it’s hard to infer tone so I assumed sarcasm. Oops- job hazard.
Actually, there is (almost) always alot of love on DM for teachers. It makes a difference; I feel appreciated.
I’ll see if I can dig up the stats but most teachers quit by year 3 and even fewer make it to year 5. In my opinion, it takes a specific personality. Organized yet flexible, controlling yet cooperative, firm but empathetic, creative, engaging and most of all trustworthy.
If my students don’t trust me emotionally and academically then I’m DOA.
OK, climbing down from the soapbox now.
- Teach
The schedule has its pros and cons. I assume that the marketplace will adapt eventually (camps, work opportunities etc). But in all the analysis of the school schedule, I am all for supporting whatever the teachers think works best for themselves and their students. I do hope that the school district evaluates with some useful measures to assess success of this schedule. I personally am flexible enough to enjoy the breaks, my kids like them, but I do find the ramping up and down of schedule a bit of a challenge. I hope that the teachers are asked to really reflect and provide input. Do they loose engagement the last few days before break and the first few days back? Does that undermine benefits of eliminating the long Summer break? Are there other ways to correct the losses from the long Summer break for the kids that need it? Would that be better than all the breaks? I don’t think the long Summer break is detrimental for all students.
This is a very good point. I hope they are asking for teachers’ input on this, and I hope the teachers will give it. I have spoken to several who say the kids were by and large useless for the first three days after the September break. These were elementary teachers.
One more note. I would say that number of days does not indicate “priority on our kids’ education”. There are so many measures by which the CSD clearly demonstrates prioritizing children’s education and if you want to be comparative, far and beyond that of Dekalb County. I think the administrators made the right call.
I haven’t had that experience. However, I do choose my activities carefully. Last days/ first days are best with engaging but relaxed projects that allow for group work.