Opinion – MCPS Calendar Shake-Up: Are Wellness Days the Answer or a Distraction?

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May 23, 2024 – Opinion By Anonymous Submitter

The Student Member of the Board of Education, Sami Saeed introduced a resolution on May 9 to add 4 half-day wellness days to the school calendar, meaning in practice to convert 4 full days to half days. Free afternoons out of school to catch up with work or practice wellness supposedly. The board will vote on it May 23.

Let’s take a look at the 2023-2024 and proposed 2024-2025 MCPS calendars.

Observations

2023-2024: Excluding weeks 18 and 31 (winter and spring breaks), there are 40 calendar weeks.

  • 23 of 40 are full 5-day weeks
  • 14 of 40 are 4-day weeks
  • 2 of 40 are 3-day weeks
  • 1 of 40 is a 0-full day week
  • 5 days are half days
  • The longest stretch of consecutive 5-day weeks is 4 weeks (weeks 14-17)

2024-2025: Excluding weeks 18 and 34 (winter and spring breaks), there are 40 calendar weeks.

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  • 24 of 40 are full 5-day weeks
  • 13 of 40 are 4-day weeks
  • 1 of 40 is a 3-day week
  • 1 of 40 is a 2-day week
  • 1 of 40 is a 0-full day week
  • 5 days are half days
  • The longest stretch of consecutive 5-day weeks is 4 weeks (weeks 28-31; weeks 36-39)

Keep in mind, this is the MCPS systemwide calendar. High schools have additional days off where students are discouraged from attending school, if they do attend, they sit in an auditorium for the day. For example, PSAT testing day, graduation day, MISA test days – it adds up.  High schools also shortened class periods once a week on “advisory day.”  The weekly advisory period is meant for catching up with work. Middle school students have daily advisory period times.

Furthermore, there are built in “wellness” days which are not free time for students to catch up, but instead have prescribed social emotional learning activities.

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Why add more disruption and less instruction to the schedule? Who does this benefit? 

  • Certainly not elementary school students. They need time in school, not more time at home or with some nonprofit’s “out of school time.”
  • Secondary students – add an option for a study hall instead of forcing 7 classes in the schedule. That is a better solution for keeping up with work.
  • For teachers – reduce the onerous administrative burden.  Enter grades once in one system. It’s 2024, not 1994 in the IT world. End the endless regrading. Cut the time they need for grading.

Everyone – let’s ask the real reason people want to avoid time in school buildings. Is it the drugs, guns, fights, lousy morale?  Or is it simply teenagers being kids and taking up their fellow student’s call for more days off?  Let’s have the difficult conversations.

The answer is not further disruptions of the school weeks.

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MCPS-calendar

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