Balanced Calendar
Here's the .pdf of the MNPS calendar survey broken down various ways: family, staff, teacher, elementary, middle, high, cluster...
While the total response was 48 to 42% the more important response by families was 45 to 44%. Couple that with the staff preference that was nearly as close (45 to 47%) and there is good reason to wait. This just too close to make such a radical change without specific evidence that the change will actually benefit the children and their families. I suggest proponents come back when they have reliable data that shows this change will be an improvement in the lives of children.
The McGavock cluster was far more in favor of a balanced calendar than any other: 54 to 36%.
Faculty preference was solidly behind the balanced calendar. 71 to 25%. (We don't yet know if those were just MNEA members that voted or if every teacher got a vote.)
6 comments:
All teachers got to vote--we got the phone survey just like the parents.
I chose "traditional" but just as easily could have answered "no preference." I disagree that it's a "radical change." It's a shifting of 12 vacation days. Hardly worth too much hullabaloo either way.
tom -- it makes a huge difference the shifting of the start of school to the end of july as it eliminates opportunities for our children to participate in programs that end the first week of august.
second -- the district did not present the balanced calendar the committee was asked to study. we studied a 9 week on two week off calendar. remember the district was to offer remediation during the first of the two week break? remember the district wanted to improve the education of the lower performing students? this is the reason the committee voted for the calendar. without the remediation i doubt the calendar would have passed committee
why has the district not been honest with the public and propose what the committee studied? why is the district not presenting a calendar that starts the third monday in august or late the second week of august and gives us a week break after the first 9 weeks? the did it this year. lets keep doing it and keep out start data in august.
oh, another thing the committee was asked to study was would the calendar reduce the abnormally high level of teacher absences (two to three times that of general business and they only work 180 days a year!!!). no the calendar would not reduce the absences and disruption to the students of having a substitute teacher
obviously i am not in favor of the calendar. i value my summers ending in august. if it were me we would start late august, have exams after christmas and end memorial day the way we use to do...
kay -- why does your blog make you enter the letters twice when you post anonymously? i lost my first set of comments and had to re-do them
thanks!
I am in the Overton cluster and talking to parents this morning including some teachers....Did not get to vote either way. Some were not home at the time and others never recieved the second call at all.
Which gives totally inaccurate "voting" information.
I will be at the meeting along with several parent/teachers in
favor of not changing to the "Balanced" calendar.
This is another typical Metro way of fixing something that "ain't broke". That seems to be the way these past few years. We are not able to run our own city in Nashville, so the powers that are and have been say, but their geniuses from other places have not adequately made changes significant enough to warrant more outside help. There are multitudes of people in this city who were born and raised here or have lived here long enough to take "ownership" of this town and want to keep the parts that make this city what it is who can run any department or board more adequately than the those who come here for a while, get their short tenure and a full retirement and go back home. This wonderful town that I love is different, but it is not better.
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