School District 57 trustees have approved the 2012-13 school calendar, which includes a two-week spring break.
That does not sit well with parent Melody Link.
She questions the validity of an online poll on the District Parent Advisory Council website, which contributed to the school board's decision to approve a longer March break, saying the 100 or so respondents to the poll did not offer a true indication of what the majority of parents actually wanted.
"It wasn't like they sent a piece of paper home with every child, it was just based on whoever visited that website," said Link "It wasn't put together well to ask the community what their opinion was. Anyone who is an educator could go on their computer and sign themselves on under an alias and say 'yes' to that. I just don't think it was a fair and equitable way of doing any sort of survey."
DPAC chair Don Sabo said parents were notified through media sources about the online poll well in advance of Tuesday's school board meeting and that poll showed a majority of parents wanted the two-week break. He also said DPAC does not have access to include their information on school newsletters to parents. That form of communication is available only to school staff. He said DPAC was not alone in recommending the longer break.
"DPAC is only one of the stakeholders sitting on the calendar committee," said Sabo. "Teachers, CUPE [support staff], the principals and vice-principals are all in favour of a two-week spring break. It's unfortunate, it will impact on some parents, single parents particularly that are working and will have to look at daycare. But over 50 per cent of the school districts in the province have the two-week spring break."
Link, who has two children in the school system, said most parents won't be taking time off work during March and a two-week break for students is not needed. She said that creates hardships for working parents, who either have trouble getting time off work at spring break when other workers are trying to get the same holiday time, or they will have to make day care arrangements for an additional week, which could prove costly.
"Other than a teacher, who leaves Prince George in the dead of winter?" she said. "Most people get three or four weeks holidays and I don't think I'll be taking two weeks off in winter. What is there for kids to do for two weeks in Prince George, when all the teachers are off to Jamaica?"
In 2013, there is only one week between spring break and the Easter weekend. That allowed the school district to move the additional Easter Monday statutory holiday to Thursday, March 28 as part of spring break, with the Good Friday holiday to follow March 29. That will leave three lost instructional days beyond the traditional one-week break and that time will be made up by adding five minutes to the length of each instructional day throughout the school year. Each school day will be four hours 50 minutes long for kindergarten-Grade 7 students, and five hours 14 minutes for students in Grades 8-12.
The 2012-13 calendar includes 183 instructional days (89 days plus four exam days in the first semester, 84 days and six exam days in the second semester). School will begin on Wednesday, Sept. 5 and the last day of classes will be Thursday, June 27.
For the first time ever, B.C. will observe the Family Day statutory holiday and there will be no classes on Monday, Feb. 18, 2013.
n Report cards are on order for nearly 13,000 public school students in School District 57.
Teachers had until Friday to finalize progress reports and the school board is promising those report cards will be issued no later than Tuesday, May 8.
