grantclaire
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Sep 23, 2007
Hi, just doing some advance planning. Do we know when most boards are having MB? I am in the GTA. Thanks
Funny, but I actually like that the 4 Ottawa Boards almost always go on slightly different weeks. As a manager it gives me a lot more flexibility in scheduling staff. The parents of kids in Catholic or French boards want different week off than those with kids in the Public board (my Quebec resident parents have a different week as well); makes my life a whole lot easier. I would think it is rare where families have kids in different boards, although it does happen here a bit with the Elementary to High School switch (most common time for kids to switch boards because of the physical location of the schools). Also gives us a couple of weeks of relief from rush hour gridlock here instead of just one really quiet week.Officially the boards are supposed to get approval to do anything different than the official schedule in the links. The Ministry of Education put a lot of this in place after the mess a few years back where different boards around Toronto went with different weeks. DW is a teacher here in Toronto (and we live in TO so we were fine). There we other teachers at her school who live outside who had kids off a different week for MB. The complexity of commuting in and around Toronto make anything other than that approach a complete nightmare.
I’m still trying to figure out why BC thought it was a good idea to have 2 weeks for Spring break!
Funny, but I actually like that the 4 Ottawa Boards almost always go on slightly different weeks. As a manager it gives me a lot more flexibility in scheduling staff. The parents of kids in Catholic or French boards want different week off than those with kids in the Public board (my Quebec resident parents have a different week as well); makes my life a whole lot easier. I would think it is rare where families have kids in different boards, although it does happen here a bit with the Elementary to High School switch (most common time for kids to switch boards because of the physical location of the schools). Also gives us a couple of weeks of relief from rush hour gridlock here instead of just one really quiet week.
OCDSB (Public board) generally follows the Ministry calendar pretty closely, but sometimes they do take the date to a vote by the teachers; so it is certainly possible to not follow the calendar. The teachers chose to keep it on the same week last vote; probably because they had all booked their vacations already based on the ministry calendar I know how DW voted because we had our vacation booked for months in advance.
I'd love to know how they pick whether to put a PA day before spring break or not. And why some months will have two while others have none. PA/PD days are decided by the board aren't they?
Funny, but I actually like that the 4 Ottawa Boards almost always go on slightly different weeks. As a manager it gives me a lot more flexibility in scheduling staff. The parents of kids in Catholic or French boards want different week off than those with kids in the Public board (my Quebec resident parents have a different week as well); makes my life a whole lot easier. I would think it is rare where families have kids in different boards, although it does happen here a bit with the Elementary to High School switch (most common time for kids to switch boards because of the physical location of the schools). Also gives us a couple of weeks of relief from rush hour gridlock here instead of just one really quiet week.
OCDSB (Public board) generally follows the Ministry calendar pretty closely, but sometimes they do take the date to a vote by the teachers; so it is certainly possible to not follow the calendar. The teachers chose to keep it on the same week last vote; probably because they had all booked their vacations already based on the ministry calendar I know how DW voted because we had our vacation booked for months in advance.
As a parent who had children in both the Public and Catholic Ottawa school boards at the same time (elementary and high school), we had the same March Break each year in Ottawa. The different week is an Ontario/Quebec thing hence the possible confusion.
That was my suspicion. There have been years where the PD day was before the March break, though, so that makes it confusing.Some are Board mandated and some are Union mandated. For high school, we typically have a PD immediately after marks are due (november, february, april, june). Since there are no reporting period in March, that might explain why there is no PD before the break.
The last time it happened it was more of a one-off and was a part of Uncle Dalton's austerity attempts than anything driven by the board calendar. I wouldn't expect to see that back anytime soon. Don't think his Fordship will do anything quite so popular.That was my suspicion. There have been years where the PD day was before the March break, though, so that makes it confusing.
It can vary by board by year. CEPEO (French public) doesn't always follow the OCDSB (they did align this year for MB however). I have a couple of my peeps who have kids in that board (and used to live in a house that backed onto one of their elementary schools - VERY obvious when school was out), others with kids in the Rural East boards and as I said a bit of variability does help us out with scheduling. I can't remember the OCDSB (DW teaches in that board) varying from the Ministry calendar ever, but have seen many examples in the other boards over the past years.As a parent who had children in both the Public and Catholic Ottawa school boards at the same time (elementary and high school), we had the same March Break each year in Ottawa. The different week is an Ontario/Quebec thing hence the possible confusion.