City Parents Boycotting First Day Of School

This week the city's public school students will come back for just one day of school, and parents say the awkward schedule is throwing a wrench in their vacation plans. Students are expected to show up for school on Wednesday, September 8th after celebrating Labor Day, but have Thursday and Friday off for Rosh Hashanah. To protest, they've turned to Facebook.

The Mother's Agenda of New York says on their page, "We are calling for a BOYCOTT on September 8th of all NYC Public Schools. Summer vacation ends when parents send their children back to school on Monday, September 13th." And many city educators agree, saying there's not much that can be taught in that one day. "It's just going to be a day of baby-sitting," said one teacher. "I expect that a third of the kids won't even show up," said James Eterno, a social-studies teacher at Jamaica HS in Queens. "So I understand [the boycott], but I don't necessarily endorse it."

The DOE says the scheduling is not ideal, but blames the teachers' union for not accepting a plan that would have make the start date September 13th and the end of the year June 9th. They also called the boycott "irresponsible." But teachers understand the frustrations. One English teacher said, "I'll spend the first day getting to know the kids, making seating arrangements, getting kids prepared for the new year. And then the following Monday I'll have to do the whole thing again. It's not a productive use of time."

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By Jaya Saxena in News on September 5, 2010 2:25 PM

Comments [rss]

cory

Snow days usually happens every year. May-be the children should go to school August 30th.Other states go earlier why can't we? You can't change the holidays. And if there no snow days so you get out of school earlier in June.

ed_Extinct

It's a pretty stupid schedule.

macondo

Ah, chalk another one up for the lazy, overpaid, taxpayer-funded, budget busting unions in this country.

JMH

Labor Day is Monday, right? (OK, that was rhetorical.) So why does school start on Wednesday 9/8 and not Tuesday 9/7? Then you'd at least have two days of school before the long weekend instead of just the one?

paxetaurora

The post is inaccurate. The school year would not have started on the 13th and ended on the 9th. The plan that the DOE proposed, with which the UFT did not agree, would have eliminated June 9th as a Chancellor's Conference Day and made it an instructional day instead. I'm not involved in the UFT, but my guess is that the UFT rejected the elimination of the Conference Day because elementary and middle schools really need that day for PD and planning for the next school year. (High schools can generally work it in around the Regents exams.)

But it's worth noting that the UFT does NOT have approve or sign off on school calendar changes. The DOE has the unilateral authority to set the school calendar. The DOE consults the UFT as per the contract, but the Chancellor is free to reject the UFT's preferences. The Chancellor used this as an opportunity to scapegoat the UFT for an unpopular decision by the DOE.

It would be impossible to end the school year on June 9 because that would not provide the minimum of 180 instructional days required for state and federal school funding.

Xwendekar

My question would be why on earth they'd choose a Wednesday to start knowing there'll be 4 days of nothing after that. I wouldn't send my kid to school that day, unless I just needed a babysitter.