Pangborn and I believe Maugansville Elementary Schools ended their school year on Friday....
From what I have been told this was so that the teachers could have time to remove all the stuff needed from their classrooms for the new schools that they will be at...
It was done this way so that the BOE would not have to pay these teachers if it was done after school was supposed to close on June 4...
OK, I can understand this line of thinking.....

HOWEVER, the MD BOE mandates that children are required to attend 180 days of school a year...
Remember, if there are a lot of snow or emergency days in a year, school may end later than the original planned date.

These children now have less than 180 days of school attendance... this is against MD BOE policy...
A few years ago we had a boat load of snow days....
The Washington CO BOE wanted to add a couple of hours a day to each school day instead of adding on days at the end of the year... their attitude was it would make up the hours..
The MD BOE said, NO you can't do that... days is days basically and even if the kids made up the hours missed, they still did not have the required number of days...
I believe, but might be wrong, that this is all tied into Federal funding of some kind...

My problem over this whole affair is that what is good for one set of kids should be good for all of them in the system...
Basically, if they are going to let Pangborn and Maugansville end school 3 days early, they should have done it for all the schools...
Obviously, Wash Co BOE does not care about the 180 day rule for Pangborn and Maugansville... so why nail it to the kids from the other schools....
As for the teachers in the other schools, they can continue to work the school year as per their contracts... I am sure there is a load of stuff they can do to get ready for the next year...

One other little point.... these kids are doing virtually nothing next week in school... in fact this past week has been mainly field trips and a fun day at my daughter's school...
IF they had let the rest of the kids out with the Pangborn and Maugansville kids, the BOE would have saved fuel for about 206 buses with an average daily round trip of about 70 miles a day... Plus the cost of driver salaries for those three days...
Not for nothing that is a lot of money in fuel and driver costs.... and the drivers DO NOT have a guaranteed number of days they drive...

Wasn't June 4 the last day assuming all the snow days were used?

I was under the impression that Pangborn and Maugansville just applied the remaining snow days. So in effect, Maugansville and Pangborn actually went 180 days and the rest are actually going 183.

I can't find how many days weren't used, but I did find this:

http://www.wcboe.k12.md.us/downloads/Publi...lendar_0708.pdf

It appears that 188 days were built into the current year's schedule. But it looks like June 10 was the scheduled last day.

I also heard about ending school early. My grandmother mentioned it to me when we went on a walk by Maugansville school. I thought teachers usually had to stay late anyway. Retiring teachers don't get more time to clean out their rooms, they do it throughout the school year. Weird.

Mod why are other schools going longer? To make up days?

Ok, you are partially correct...
Yes the calendar states that June 4 was the last scheduled day, This date had snow or emergency days built into it....
IF we had not had any snow or emergency days the kids would have been out of school on May 29
HOWEVER, since we had 4 snow or emergency days this year the kids are supposed to be out of school on June 4 in order to make the 180 day requirement...
I know it sounds confusing, but that is how it works...
So the kids at Pangborn and Maughansville are actually only going to school 177 days and the rest of the kids are going 180
The question remains, however, why not do it for all the kids....

Wow May 29th is really early to let out, that's weird.

That sux, griz. Wasn't it a few years ago there was some type of incident (I can't remember if it was weather related or not) but WCBOE was trying to get a waiver from the state board to reduce the school year for some type of emergency and the State was adamant about not granting the waiver.

Exactly... see the third paragraph in my original posting...

Sorry, thanks... I should have read more closely.

The State of Maryland requires schools to be open a minimum of 180 days. In order for any school to have fewer days, the State Board of Education must agree. They are very reluctant to do so and will only do so if they deem the reason valid and necessary. The Board must operate on a balanced budget and cannot suddenly decide to pay the teachers of two schools (in this case somewhere around 60-70 teachers) for three additonal days. I fail to see why you are making such a big deal of this issue. It only happens once in 40-60 years per school. Another thread on this forum recently talked about how hard a school teacher's job is and how many hours they put in beyond the school day, so why would you complain about this situation???

Let's answer your remarks in order..
The MD BOE requires a minimum of 180 days..... the kids at Pangborn and Maugansville did not do 180 days... they did 177 days.... therefore going against the MD BOE mandated number of days...

At no time did I say that the teachers HAD to work an additional 3 days..... what I said was IF they had released ALL the kids from ALL the schools on the same day they did the kids from Pangborn and Maugansville, the teachers in the other schools COULD still work out the additional days required by their contract with no additional problems.
I would be the last one to say that the teachers do not work hard or more home hours than anyone knows....

My question is WHY only Pangborn and Maugansville students and not the rest of the school students.... what should be good for them should be good for the rest....
No place in the article does it state that the Wash Co BOE asked for or got special permission to end school early... and if they did WHY NOT for the whole county....
Also if you look at paragraph 3 of my original posting, you will see that Wash Co tried this in the past and was turned down by MD BOE... albeit different circumstances... that was for extended snow days...

Only Pangborn and Maugansville because the job of moving schools is horrendous. The other schools do not have this need.

Boo-frickin-hoo, talk about senseless whining and crying over petty bullsh*t!!! Nevermind these kids spent many days, in and out of harsh weather, going to and from portable classrooms, without the luxury of changing classes indoors, like your kids!! So, to alleviate this, there are new schools being built, and to BEST accommodate ALL issues at hand, the B.O.E. made a decision to close these schools a couple days early. Whoopdee-frickin'-doo, try belly-aching over something (much more) worth-while!!! Try using that energy towards something like ever-increasing gas prices, or the costs of everything else going up!!!

Dude, seriously, take a pill. If you didn't like the topic, why did you even bother. It's OK Griz, it takes all kinds to make a forum run I guess.