Returning unused snow days at the end of the school year is Claire Scholz’s idea of a bonus.
“Educators go beyond the seven-hour work day. We do this not expecting anything in return,” said Scholz, president of the Loudoun Education Association (LEA), at the Oct. 8 School Board meeting. “By the end of the year, teachers are tired. The snow days are the teachers’ version of a bonus check.”
The School Board tabled voting on a policy that drops five snow days from the end of the school year if, by April 1, they are not used for weather or other emergencies. The vote was rescheduled for the Oct. 22 meeting, giving two absent board members a chance to vote and spreading the item over two meetings.
“It had come out of committee very quickly. People didn’t have an opportunity to comment,” said chairman Joseph Vogric (Dulles).
THE PERSONNEL SERVICES Committee developed the proposed snow-day policy, which was never presented as an information item to the board and went directly on the agenda as an action item.
“I think we should maximize the amount of instructional time we have available to us,” Vogric said. “I see it more of a bonus that we have additional time for instruction rather than as a need to give back or pay back the fact that we didn’t have snow days.”
Harry Holsinger (Blue Ridge) agreed, saying. “We have an obligation to do as much as we can, not as little as we can.”
For Warren Geurin (Sterling), the calendar by the last week of school is “over and done with.”
“There isn’t much point in soldiering on for the point of soldiering on,” he said. “You pretty much exhausted everything in the curriculum. You have had all the testing.”
The board unanimously adopted the 2003-04 calendar, which includes 198 teacher-contract days and 185 student days. Five days beyond the state’s requirements are built in for snow days. The snow-day proposal, if approved at the next meeting, will be included in the adopted calendar.
The calendar sets the first day of school on Aug. 25 and the last day on June 16. Winter break is scheduled from Dec. 22 to Jan. 2 and spring break from April 5 to 9. The calendar is a fixed calendar.
“This calendar has been under heated discussion. We’ve looked long and hard at this calendar for the past few years,” Holsinger said. “Where could we possibly cut it?”
IN OTHER BUSINESS:
* Loudoun schools have 157 more students in class this year than originally projected and nearly 2,950 new students from last year, according to the enrollment report for the 2002-03 school year. The schools have 37,532 students, according to the Sept. 30 count that will be submitted to the Virginia Department of Education for funding purposes.
The Sept. 30 count is .42 percent less than projections, which called for 37,375 students. The count shows that Loudoun schools have 19,225 elementary school students, 8,619 middle school students and 9,688 high school students.
* The student population for the 2003-04 school year is expected to increase 7.2 percent to 40,250 students, according to enrollment projections based on historical and current enrollment information.
“We are still growing quite effectively and we’re not seeing that slow down,” said Sam Adamo, director of planning and legislative services.
* The Virginia, County of Loudoun School Census gives a different set of population numbers based on the number of school-age children living in the county, which is 45,559 children between the ages of 5 and 19. The number of children increased by 34 percent from the 1999 census, when 33,887 children were counted. The county receives $1,500 in state aid for each child included in the census.
The census was conducted from May 27 to July 15. About 48 percent of all households in the county have children ages 1 to 19.