Saturday, July 25, 2020

LEAP Day - all week!

The Richland 2 School Board has announced a Special-Called Meeting for Tuesday, July 28, 2020. The only item on the agenda is approval of the 2020-2021 Revised Calendar for the school year.

The meeting will begin at 4:30PM and go immediately into Executive Session. The open meeting will re-convene at 5:00PM and will be live-streamed. Use this link to access the meeting on your computer: www.richland2.org/livestream

NOTE 1: The District's homepage fails to provide the livestream meeting link.
NOTE 2. "Upcoming Events" on the homepage fails to list the special-called meeting.

Look at the revised calendar (Calendar D) carefully.

The orange fill for August 17-21 indicates Elementary and Middle School LEAP Days.
The red fill for August 24-28 indicates Teacher Work Days.

NOTE. The first day of school is Monday, August 31.
Then notice the holiday on Monday, September 7. That's Labor Day, of course.

What is a LEAP Day?

The South Carolina Department of Education has posted this information. The title for the posting includes a grammar example that, in many years of education and business, I have never seen:
Learn, Evaluate, Analyze, & Prepare (LEAP) Added Instructional Days
Pre- and Post-Assessment Requirements

I wonder whether anyone at the SCDE considered whether that is correct or agonized over the combination of comma and ampersand. Why not omit the comma?

Are the big-dollar honchos at the SCDE conscious at all of the cost of operting schools? Apparently not.

"Not all 4K–8th grade students in a district must be involved in all five learning preparation days. Those students deemed critical to attend, as well as how many days they will need to attend, should be determined based on the identified needs of students in a district."

Who decides which students do not have to show up for one or more LEAP Days?
Who does have to show up?
How does the District arrange transportation, teachers, staff and breakfast & lunch for those who are "critical"? Guess which ones won't show up?

Should the District should switch the weeks of LEAP Days and Teacher Work Days? Should school start August 24 for all students?