Both the Texas State Senate and the House have passed bills controlling the dates which Texas schools must start and end. The new law says that Texas schools cannot start before the Tuesday after Labor Day and must end by June 7th. (Starting the 2006-2007 school year.)
Most adults would happily agree to this plan. After all ... when they went to school that is how it was!! In fact, when I went to school in the 60's and 70's in Illinois ... we started after Labor Day and ended before Memorial Day ... and I got a pretty solid education. We even had 2 weeks at Christmas and all kinds of days off during the year ... Columbus Day .... Veteran's Day .... Lincoln's B-Day .... Washington's B-Day .... and a Spring Break around Easter time.
HOWEVER .... and this is a BIG POINT .... we were not required by the State to have 180 school days. In fact ... when I first came here to Texas to teach, the state only required 170 school days per year. In my 22 years of teaching the State has quietly and carefully increased the length of the school year .... WITHOUT increasing teacher's salaries accordingly. Teachers have effectively had 3 weeks added to their workyear (10 days of classes and 5 Inservice days). The length of the school year has increased and we have been backing up the start date to earlier and earlier in August. Where else do we get 3 extra weeks of school? ( I would prefer to go to school in August and not go to school in June rather than vice versa.) But now those 3 extra weeks will have to come from somewhere else ....
Parents will not even notice the negative effects of this new legislation until they start making plans for Thanksgiving. Under the new law ... schools have to fit all 180 school days and 7 teacher inservice days into the time between Labor Day and June 7. What that means is there will be no more days off during the school year. If families want to travel for Thanksgiving, they will need to travel ON Thanksgiving Day. Christmas Holidays will start Dec. 24th and end Jan. 2 .... no more 2 week Christmas breaks. Spring Break is totally canceled under this plan. (I'll bet we still have MLK Day, though!)
Does your church plan ski trips over Spring Break? Not any more. Does your family take a nice vacation over Christmas? Not any more. Will parents still try to do these things? YOU BET!! They will take kids out for a week here or a week there. Thanksgiving will be a week break, whether school is meeting or not. Schools' Average Daily Attendance (ADA) will suffer and that is one of the big criteria the State uses to send schools MONEY.
I personally am very glad that I have made the decision to leave Public Schools. I NEED those breaks during the year. Those are sanity breaks. I predict that with fewer days off during the school year, there will be more incidents of school violence .... but this time it will be the teachers causing the problems!!
Students need those breaks too.
It will be much better for me to watch from the sidelines as everyone tries to deal with the fallout of this new law.
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2 comments:
Yeah, I'm interested to see what the fallout is over this over the next few months - at least there's a year in there to let it all sink in before it goes into effect.
Hi! from Galicia (Spain). I´m teacher too. My blogs is: http://engalego.blogspot.com and http://redactor.blogspot.com (the second blogs is made for my pupils).
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