We Are Canceling School Too Much

So a lot of people are saying that schools got parents out of the habit of sending their kids to school and that's why we have the chronic absenteeism problem we have today.

And I don't think that's really true.

I think people have to take personal responsibility for sending their kids to school.

It's not the school's fault if you don't feel like it.

You need to feel like it as a parent.

But I do think there are some things we need to do to rebuild trust with parents, to rebuild that social contract of just how school works and getting kids to school consistently.

I think there are some things we can do as a profession.

One is that we have to make sure that school is a safe and orderly place.

So if kids are getting bullied, if kids are not learning, if there's chaos, who would want to send their kid to that?

So we've got to deal with the school environment, certainly.

I also think, though, we've got to talk about canceling school.

We've got to talk about early dismissals.

We've got to talk about professional development days.

We've got to talk about four day school weeks.

Like this idea that school shouldn't be an everyday thing, I think has really messed with people and people have very limited patience for all the early dismissals and the PD days when they have to go to work, they expect it to be a normal school day.

And for whatever reason that we've come up with, it's not.

I think we've got to stop doing that.

I think we've got to go back to, okay, there are breaks, there's summer vacation, there's winter break, there's spring break.

But other than that, your kid's in school and it's going to be every day.

And we're not going to have all these random times when you've got to figure out what to do.

during the school day with your kid.

I think we've lost some trust and some credibility with parents by canceling school too much.

And that also includes weather.

For some reason, I'm seeing schools now cancel for weather that might happen that probably wouldn't even be a big deal if it did happen.

Like I totally understand if there's a blizzard, if it's like really, really unsafe to have school.

Okay.

But now we're canceling school preemptively because of the forecast that And not even just saying, hey, if it starts snowing, we're going to dismiss early, but like it might do something.

Why are we canceling school for this?

Like this just does not build goodwill with families.

So I think we've got 180 days to work with kids.

It's not that many.

That's less than half of the calendar year.

Let's make the most of those days.

Let's stop having random early dismissals and PD days and get a good day of learning in all 180 days of the year.

I think that'll go a long way with parents.

Let me know what you think.