Fairfax County General :
Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
With this year’s warm weather and lack of snow many people have been asking if the school year will end earlier. The short is answer is no.
Why? As a learning organization, FCPS values the importance of as much instructional time as possible for our students. Virginia law requires school districts to provide 180 days or 990 hours of classroom instruction each school year. FCPS reverts to the 990 hour calendar only if the 180-day requirement is not met because of severe weather conditions or other emergency situations.
Since the 2014-15 school year, the School Board has approved a 180-day calendar. Prior to this, FCPS adopted a 183-day school year calendar with the three extra days to be used for snow and other emergencies. Under this calendar, once FCPS used the three snow days, additional days had to be added to the end of the school year to meet the state requirement.
The current FCPS planned school year exceeds the 990 hour state requirement because of the length of the student day. The additional time (hours) is converted to “days” that can be used in the event of inclement weather. An advantage of the built in hours is that days do not need to be added on at the end of the year, as was done in years past, when too many snow days were used. Last year, our area had a very significant storm which required the use of most of the additional time built in since FCPS had eight days closed due to weather and a number of late openings.
There is no means for days to be given back at the end of the year because those additional “days” are simply the excess time beyond 990 hours and, if the days were given back, FCPS would fall short of the required 180-day school year. In addition, teacher contracts (mostly 194 days in length) are based on a 7.5 hour day and are tied to the number of school days per year with teacher workdays included.
While we are hopeful for continued good weather, winter is not over yet, and some years we have had severe spring weather.
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
FCPS to Students: Suck it!
Posted by:
Scheduler of Things
()
Date: February 24, 2017 03:57PM
No Snow - Can We Start Summer Early?
With this year’s warm weather and lack of snow many people have been asking if the school year will end earlier. The short is answer is no.
Why? As a learning organization, FCPS values the importance of as much instructional time as possible for our students. Virginia law requires school districts to provide 180 days or 990 hours of classroom instruction each school year. FCPS reverts to the 990 hour calendar only if the 180-day requirement is not met because of severe weather conditions or other emergency situations.
Since the 2014-15 school year, the School Board has approved a 180-day calendar. Prior to this, FCPS adopted a 183-day school year calendar with the three extra days to be used for snow and other emergencies. Under this calendar, once FCPS used the three snow days, additional days had to be added to the end of the school year to meet the state requirement.
The current FCPS planned school year exceeds the 990 hour state requirement because of the length of the student day. The additional time (hours) is converted to “days” that can be used in the event of inclement weather. An advantage of the built in hours is that days do not need to be added on at the end of the year, as was done in years past, when too many snow days were used. Last year, our area had a very significant storm which required the use of most of the additional time built in since FCPS had eight days closed due to weather and a number of late openings.
There is no means for days to be given back at the end of the year because those additional “days” are simply the excess time beyond 990 hours and, if the days were given back, FCPS would fall short of the required 180-day school year. In addition, teacher contracts (mostly 194 days in length) are based on a 7.5 hour day and are tied to the number of school days per year with teacher workdays included.
While we are hopeful for continued good weather, winter is not over yet, and some years we have had severe spring weather.