Cobb is using fund balance, but have a much larger tax digest to absorb through increased millage. Dekalb is reducing benefits by cutting employer contributions to retirement funds. Long term affect that will not protect the employee. Both Cobb and Dekalb had already instituted one day furloughs before the governor's announcement. FCBOE cut pay because the employees did not want to see benefits reduced. Unfortunately the only area to get millions of dollars in savings is to affect salary and/or benefits. You can only save so much by turning off the lights and bumping up the A/C. Personnel is over 80% of the budget. Fayette was not the only system with pay cuts but it appears that it was the largest percentage cut.

How many teacher furlough days could the approximate $400,000 that the county has spent to teach english and reading to resource students save? Another Golden Goose I guess. I thought the great "Max Thompson" was the cure and solution for teaching everyone. lol The new system uses such innovative techniques as phonics!.

My guess is that the cut is part of what the STATE pays towards the salaries.

I don't know if a contract says they will get "X" dolars for the 190 days and no less under any circumstances!

A nyway teachers shouldn't have "contracts," unless they guarantee a certain teaching quality!

I asked about teacher contracts this past year, because the ones we did get in Fayette County were written in very vague language. I was told that contracts protect the school system more than the teachers, that they guarantee a sufficient workforce for the next school year. The contracts I have had with other jobs, before my teaching career, were very specific as to job responsibilities, benefits, and beginning salary. I don't have an argument so much with contracts as I do with tenure. If an employee, teacher or otherwise, is not performing, that employee either needs to shape up or ship out!

Implementing 4 day school weeks would be too disruptive in a modern household. what is great for working adults, can be harmful to children in households where adults work. Most jobs, especially working mother jobs, are centered around weekday employment. After school programs are set up with that in mind. A day off each week would cause a childcare concern for working families, or an unsupervised concern for teenage children. I personally, am in favor of extending the school days and tracking hours of instruction and eliminating days on the beginning or end of the school year as one Georgia county has done.
And I am an unbiased observor here. I will not have childcare concerns in a four day school week. What makes sense for adults, does not make sense for children or working adults.

It is worth noting that we currently have an archaic school calendar based on an agrarian society that is virtually non existent today.

So, do we (you) want a school system that is convenient for the parents to utilize as a day care (which we have also charged with solving all our society's ills and teaching an ever increasingly unprepared clientele), or do we want a school system that is ideal for rendering instruction and facilitating learning without regard for when and where most adults work?

I would submit that while the two are not mutually exclusive neither are they necessarily congruent.

What say you all?

While I would agree that the reasons for what was once the "traditional" school calendar are now obsolete and not sacred in any meaningful discussion, I'm still a proponent of not having year-round schooling and totally against the educational establishment's attempted gradualism of phasing it in by starting school in early August. Here's why:

There's a whole lot more than simply days in the classroom that make up the educational experience. Cutting down on realistic opportunities for vacations and summer employment isn't going to achieve better results overall for HS graduates. Fluffing up a school schedule with BS like "teacher work days" and extra breaks to try and achieve something resembling a semester system and to simply extend the school year is ludicrous. The argument that most universities are also on the semester schedule isn't relevant when any fool that went through HS and college knows they spend much less time "in school" during college than HS.

I don't buy the argument about knowledge retention that is used to try and justify year-round schooling or more classroom days. The fact is that a lot information that is part of our educational system that very few will ever remember because they have zero reason to ever need the knowledge. That doesn't mean that something that few will ever use in their life like Calculus or Trigonometry shouldn't be part of education, but it's natural that few will ever remember these subjects when they never use it nor have any desire to. Education in America is often a "one size fits all" experience that is also tilted towards getting accepted to college being the ultimate goal instead of knowledge.

I'm all for more efficient education since the US has proven over and over that money being thrown around doesn't lead to good results. I don't think that's year-round schooling and I also question why in the hell any school starts in early August in the south when it's 95 degrees outside and energy costs are at their highest.

Children attending school is mandated by law, that include those that opt out for other types of instruction-home, private, etc. Schools are designed for the vast majority of a motivated student body to complete instruction-85% or so. It is non sensical to design a new school concept with no regard for the impact that it would have on children and families - unless laws are changed and the constitution evolves to make each child a ward of the state and not of the parents. If we want to intelligently evolve education, then make decisions based upon hours of instruction and mastery of coursework, and then overlay a school schedule that causes as little harm and disruption as possible. It is absolutely ridiculous, as well as a not so subtle shift of costs to parents to drastically change school hours of operation to save utility costs per week. These same costs would be achieved by shifting to an hours based concept and chopping off the number of days the building would be occupied. At least it would only cause an additional 3 weeks of change, as opposed to an ongoing 26 weeks of change and turmoil.

I really appreciate the points raised by JMartinez, though I'm not sure I really followed his train of thought very well. But, as a teacher and someone who has lived in the South and PTC specifically for most of my life, I really am bored with this whole "agrarian" calendar argument as a way to criticize the school calendar. Yes--when I was younger, Fayette schools were on the so-called "agrarian" calendar. School began after Labor Day. But since most schools in Georgia now start the first or second week in August (long before the "harvest" comes in), how is this critique relevant any longer? What I have often found curious, however, is why school systems across the Northeast and Midwest continue to delay school starts until after Labor Day. Is there some sort of "cash crop" in Detroit that keeps them from starting school earlier. Sorry to hear that you have been inconvenienced by the school system.

It's good that you didn't follow my train of thought too well, I run in to things a lot.

I was basically just asking if we should consider a calendar that is better for the students and teachers even if it is at the expense of convenience (I know that studies show teenagers learn better if they begin later in the day for example but logistically that makes it very hard households with multiple kids if you have staggered start times). Some studies show that the three on one off (be it weeks or months) schedule works best (aka: year 'round schedule in some locations. A strong argument can be made that weather in a particular region could and should greatly impact the school year schedule. Heat in the south and snow and extreme cold in the north might influence the schedule for example.

Either way, I was just trying to find out what you all thought the purpose and intention should be of the school calendar and how it should be changed if at all.

Oh, as for Detroit where they lead the nation in unemployment I am not sure what they are doing but in Chicago I think they are all going to funerals ... have you seen the murder numbers? ughh.

It was also too blame hot in schools not air-conditioned!

And even today it costs more to air-condition in August than in September!

Many teachers also used to further their education in those three months. Most now have all they are going to get.

Frankly, I think it is a waste of money and talent to shut the schools down for any length of time--even Saturdays--and maybe a winter week or two when it snows up north the worst! And then only when when it occurs.

Here, a week or two in August.
There is no need for 2-3 weeks for holidays! Day or two enough.