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To: Rockford Public Schools Board of Education

Reduce Early Releases For 2024/2025

When Rockford Public Schools released the academic calendar for the 2023/2024 school year, many families and staff were surprised to see how early we start and end the year, and that 10 additional early release days were added to allow time for teachers to complete Professional Development.

In 2022/2023, the district had 23 full weeks planned; however due to snow days and sporting events, those kids who never get sick and had 100% attendance got 19 full weeks of school this year. The 2023/2024 calendar only has 15 full weeks planned. This does not prep our children for the real world and creates a lot of extra planning for families for daycare and sports. When you factor in weather and events, most children in our district will likely only see 12 full weeks of academia in 2023/2024. A RPS student will receive less of an education than the students at the surrounding districts.

There are so many other negative effects that this schedule will have including how Tech Center students will be impacted and how much further behind children who have specials/electives. In addition, families that need to pay for childcare or take time off of work for these days will endure an additional $200 - $600 expense per year. Working parents will have less availability to volunteer for school activities and field trips due to the need to save their time off for the additional early releases.

Staff will not benefit from this type of scheduled professional development. They will have to transition from their work mindset to a learning mindset mid-day, which is a challenge when things come up and cannot just be set aside until the next day. There is also concern around how each of our nine elementary schools will schedule specials and how each school will do it differently causing more inconsistency for our students. Less time in the classroom puts more stress on teachers to teach the same amount of content in less time.

Why is this important?

We believe that RPS can come up with a better scheduling solution for Professional Development time that does not include keeping students out of the classroom for so many hours every month. We ask that you join us by adding your name to request that the Rockford Public School Admin to take a different approach to the 2024/2025 academic calendar.

How it will be delivered

Petition was first presented to the School Board of Education on August 14th, 2023;
I will bring this back to board in January and February 2024.

Category

Updates

2023-12-17 14:50:05 -0500

OKay parents, specifically those will elementary kids, how has the early releases affect your kid(s) and your family - from the transition from summer, to daycare, frequent schedule changes, missed busing or confusion about pickups, etc.? Now, I ask you to look at the new district lines. Many kids that go to Meadow Ridge will now go to Park Side. This means a new school, teachers, environment, etc. on top of frequent schedule changes early releases cause. I would like to hear from those that have been impacted and I urge you to sign the petition and go to the January 15th board meeting before they finalize next school year's calendar. TIA!

2023-09-07 10:27:39 -0400

Please help share this petition as I do not have friends on social media due to my account being hacked. When I had 5,000 friends this would have been easily at thousands of signatures, so I need your help in spreading the world! TIA!

2023-08-15 13:04:52 -0400

I was pulled aside after the board meeting yesterday and was told they are definitely going to be evaluating the schedule this year. I will be waiting a few months and then requesting attendance for the early release days. I also will be watching to see if they cancel school for any football games. Please keep sharing, if we get to 500 I will share again with the board, and then at 1,000, 1,500, and so on.

2023-07-28 12:44:53 -0400

The following 8 dates hurt our students' routine and do not follow the PLC process: Sept 13th makes the 1st full week of school week 5; Nov 29th creates 3 early releases on top of 3 days off for a holiday and there are no full weeks of school in November; Jan 10th is the 3rd day back to school after 2 weeks off so how are kids supposed to get back into routine & what is there to collaborate on when there’s only been 2 ½ days of school?; Feb 14th when there is no school 16th; Feb 28th & Mar 1st create two early releases in one week; Mar 27th is the day before spring break, so the argument that teachers can adjust learning needs the next day is a moot point for this day and could be argued that this would be the same as having early releases on Fridays instead of Wednesdays; Apr 10th is the 3rd day back to school after Spring Break so how are kids supposed to get back into routine & what is there to collaborate on when there’s only been 2 ½ days of school?

2023-07-28 12:39:58 -0400

I was also surprised when he told me he had not heard of consistency and routine being key to helping create an effective learning environment for children. This is a very widespread known practice for not just teachers but daycare providers and parents.

2023-07-28 12:39:49 -0400

I met with the Assistant Superintendent Wednesday morning. The argument for early releases on Wednesdays is that collaborative teams would be able to adjust learning needs the next day. The information given to me points out that the ongoing cycle involves gathering evidence of current levels of student learning; however, there are instances in our 23/24 calendar where there is no time to gather such evidence and evaluate current learning needs.

2023-07-24 14:43:29 -0400

100 signatures reached

2023-07-24 13:16:15 -0400

50 signatures reached

2023-07-24 12:39:36 -0400

25 signatures reached

2023-07-24 12:21:29 -0400

10 signatures reached