Creating a Calendar

Seattle has put together its calendar for next year, reports the Seattle PI. There's quite a few days for make-ups in case the weather is lousy again, which is probably a good thing.

This is the first year that I've been able to take an active part in the discussion about how to put our calendar together, and it's been an adventure. Some of the thigns that have come up:

• Short weeks stink, especially when they're stacked on top of each other. This past November we had a 4 day week (Veteran's Day), a three day week (conferences), and another 3 day week (Thanksgiving) back-to-back-to-back. We've tried to work around that by putting conferences the week of Thanksgiving, along with a LID day, and being smart about where we put our LID days during the year.
  
  
• Before Memorial Day, or after Memorial Day? A lot of our parents like to travel for the holiday, and we try to accomodate that by not starting school until afterwards, but the side effect is that we go until the middle of June.
  
  
• WSIPC, those nominally responsible for the rhinoceros in the room that is Skyward, does their big update the first weekend of every month. Well and good, except when that runs into the grading window and keeps everyone from getting their report cards done. We toyed with moving conferences earlier or later, but it wasn't worth the trouble.
  
  
• We also like building a 4-day weekend in February to go along with MLK Day, using one of our LID or PDD days. It's like a midwinter break!

It's a haggle. Move conferences, and you're too close to WASL. Start too early, and the beginning of school never ends. Put in too many breaks, you go long, and the summer vacation doesn't feel right. How close do you get to the Christmas break? With New Years day on a Tuesday, is it OK to come back on Wednesday?

I've a new respect for our administrators.