Is the School Board really listening-

More than 800 residents signed a petition last month to adopt the Prince William County calendar. This calendar provides an after Labor Day start, includes an abundance of built-in snow days and allows for a full week of spring break. The School Board recently created its own calendar that includes an after Labor Day start but unnecessarily sacrifices several important and positive aspects of the heavily supported PWCS calendar.

The School Board's new calendar proposal does provide an after Labor Day start but not much more. It basically eliminates spring break and other holidays and includes eight workdays during the school year (PWC only has three).

If the board was truly listening, it would have realized that the PWC calendar provides significantly better alternatives in each of these areas. Parents would be assured the luxury of a fixed calendar with the recognition of built-in time for inclement weather. The board presently refuses to acknowledge this built-in time and leaves parents guessing as to when school will end since inclement weather days are tacked onto the end of the school year. I have yet to hear any valid reasons for not adopting the PWCS calendar.

The School Board's proposal regarding inclement weather prompted one board member to comment that "Our children could be attending school the entire month of June if we have a bad winter." This would be totally unecessary since Culpeper schools already have built-in time. The shortest school day in the county is at A.G. Richardson. These students attend school for 6 hours and 20 minutes each day. With 30 minutes subtracted for lunch, 5 hours and 50 minutes (5.83 hours) of instructional time remains each day. The new calendar proposal provides for 180 instructional days. By multiplying the total instructional days (180) by the total daily instructional hours (5.83) the result is 1,050 instructional hours for the school year.

It is important to note, the state requires only 180 days or 990 hours of instruction. Therefore, Culpeper schools have a minimum surplus of 60 hours of instruction. If the School Board elects to send our children to school until the end of June due to a bad winter, this would be their choice, not a requirement.
The board's disregard for the interests of the people who signed the petition to adopt the PWCS calendar should be a great concern to the community.

Culpeper school employees recently had the opportunity to vote on three calendar proposals for next year. Sadly, the PWCS calendar wasn't included. If the board truly wanted to show the community and its employees that it is listening, the PWCS calendar would have been included in the vote.

I strongly encourage everyone to contact their School Board member to express their displeasure with the board's decision to ignore the community's voice. If the choices of the School Board members are not representative of their constituent's interests, perhaps we should make our feelings known by the choices we make in November. Also, please contact me with any questions, suggestions, or criticisms because I am listening.