Next year's Prince William County Schools' calendar will include a two-week winter vacation for students and teachers and will turn the Columbus Day teacher workday into a divisionwide professional learning day.
The Director of the Office of Accountability, Jennifer Coyne Cassata, presented the new calendar to the School Board at their Dec. 4 meeting.
According to Cassata, the calendar was created by a citizen representative committee that included parents, students, teachers, principals, other school employees, employee representative associations, student learning and accountability representatives and human resources representatives. It was then approved by the Superintendent before being presented to the School Board.
Cassata said they cannot always give two weeks off for Christmas break, but next school year's calendar allowed it because of an early Labor Day (Sept 1 in 2014), that allowed for school to begin on Sept. 2. As such, the last day of school before Christmas break will be Friday, Dec. 19, 2014; school will resume on Tuesday Jan. 6, 2015.
Meanwhile, the addition of the Columbus Day break (Oct. 13) is meant to give students a break during the long stretch of September through November of which there no other holiday breaks.
As it has been done in the past, the calendar also has the Monday after Easter (April 6 in 2015) off for students, following the week off for Spring Break (beginning Monday, Mar. 30, 2015), which allows for people to to get home from traveling. Typically, teachers are able to choose to put in a teacher workday that Monday or the Saturday after the last day of school before Spring Break.
Other days off include Election Day (Nov. 4) for students and Veteran's Day (Nov. 11). The committee, meeting with an election subcommittee last year, had decided to close schools for teachers and students every four years for presidential elections, and to otherwise have a teacher work day on all other election days in which voter turnout is smaller. Occoquan School Board member Lillie Jessie suggested that an election committee member serve on the calendar committee next year.
School Board members also addressed the writing-campaign effort led primarily by students to receive two additional days of Christmas break this year.
"It's just impossible to take those two days now," said Betty Covington of the Potomac District, recognizing the calls and email requests School Board members have received. She explained that the calendar had already been set, and moreover, it had been set to meet the needs of having the 180 state required instructional days plus additional days to accommodate snow days.
Alyson Satterwhite of the Gainesville District thanked students for demonstrating their interest in the process.
Chairman Milt Johns explained that, "All of those ships were launched by a fraudulent email attributed to Dr. Walts that actually Dr. Walts did not send"
He added that the School Board does not often change a calendar mid-year, but every time they have, "It has been a disaster, because people have made vacation plans. People have made testing plans."
Johns also clarified that parents can have their child take a day off if they are celebrating a religious holiday not included on the calendar and that will be an excused absence. He also said that parents can choose to keep their children home on snow days in which the schools are open, but parents feel it would be unsafe for their children to travel to school.
Brentsville School Board member Gil Trenum proposed researching if the half day on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving should be changed to a full day off, considering the high absences on that day.
"At the high school level it's about 34 percent, even at the middle school elementary level there's about 19 percent of kids that are out," Trenum said.
"Thanksgiving really wasn't talked about this time," said Cassata as her committee members were more focused on scheduling around the Christmas holiday.
Johns said they could talk about providing an additional day for Thanksgiving, but he has seen where backing up one day just leads to the day before needing to be a half day.
Johns said it is a good calendar, even though he does not doubt there will be some in the community who will hate it.
The School Board will vote on the calendar at their next meeting.
Support Bristow Beat - Donate Today!