Following the week-long snow break in early February, the MCPS board decided to extend the school year by five days, making the final school day June 26.
MCPS’s original calendar included an extra day to be taken by school closures in case of severe weather conditions. However, the long snow break resulted in additional days that needed to be made up.
MCPS is required to make up five instructional days to meet the state requirement of 180 instructional days. Originally, MCPS proposed to take away the non-instructional day on March 20 and replace it with a regular school day. The holiday on that day, Eid al-Fitr, marks the end of Ramadan.
“The people that are celebrating the holiday [on March 20th] are probably gonna have to skip anyway so now they’re just gonna miss stuff,” senior Anne Mulkey said.
This idea was eventually rejected by the board in order to let people celebrate the holiday, with the same freedom every other holiday gets throughout the year, without the fear of missing school.
March 20 changed to a grading and reporting day for teachers instead of a professional development day. Additionally, April 15, previously a grading and reporting day marking the end of Quarter 3, has been changed to an early release day, with students and teachers required to come to school.
MCPS is hopeful that with these recent adjustments to the school year calendar, the Maryland State Board of Education will approve the waiver that will return the last day of school to June 17.
In case there is no approval, June 17 and June 18 will be full, regular school days, with continued learning in all subjects.
June 19 remains a county-wide closure because of Juneteenth. June 22 will also be a full day of school, with June 23 off for county elections. June 24 will be the last full day of school, with June 25 and 26 closing out the school year as early release days.
Most students agree with Jarosi, even though MCPS has a reason for making such decisions.
“I think it’s fair [to add a couple of days at the end of the school year], but at the same time useless…because we won’t be learning as much in them,” sophomore Hillel Meshulam said.
A new proposal was made to add 30 minutes to the end of the school day, as a way to make up missed hours. While this proposal will not go into effect, it had students panicking about the thought of staying at school past the usual 2:30.
Ultimately, MCPS needed to build in an extra five instructional days, and while having them at the end of the year is not ideal, it ended up being the solution the Board could agree on.
“It’s not really adding days, it’s just balancing the days we lost,” sophomore Hillel Meshulam said.
