Dallas 2015 Scheduling Issues

[Greg Needel]

For us the issue is that it falls on Easter weekend....we are still trying to figure out what to do also.

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Greg Needel

For us the issue is that it falls on Easter weekend....we are still trying to figure out what to do also.

We didn't compete at Lone Star because of Easter weekend last year.

OKC and Dallas are both Easter weekend, and Hub City is week 5 right before Lone Star.

We are planning to do Bayou and Lone Star this year. We were hoping to mix things up a bit but the schedule didn't allow for it.

[Michael Blake]

Looks like Dallas won't work for us this year... dang it we _really_ like Dallas Regional.

Looks like we're doing Alamo - Week 2... then Bayou - Week 3 (Spring Break)... then Hub City/Lubbock - Week 5.

--Michael Blake

[safiq10]

We are running into a similar problem because Dallas and OKC fall on Easter Weekend. We plan on going to Bayou/Lubbock and Houston. Really sad to be leaving the Dallas Regional this year!

[wireties]

Thanks all for the advice and support. We went back with a plan to not take freshman and sophomores on Thursday and the district approved. But it turns out they approved because Friday is good Friday and there is no school - arghh.

So now we have to canvas the parents for objections to competing over Easter weekend.

[Michael Blake]

Originally Posted by wireties

So now we have to canvas the parents for objections to competing over Easter weekend.

Easter Weekend is TOUGH to overcome in Texas... and _righteously_ so.

--Michael Blake

[rsegrest]

I may be able to help clarify the reasoning behind not wanting students to travel the week before testing because my district does the same thing.

If you have never seen the questions on the STAAR exams the majority of them are application based. Students have to figure out what the question is asking, weed out the extraneous information, and then determine how to find the answer. This is part of the reason the state decided to drop the number of required tests from 15 to 5 (that and we were spending almost 9 weeks of the school year testing). Add to this that STAAR results can prevent a student from graduating. You can understand why districts take STAAR so seriously.

During the week prior to testing classes spend the majority of the time doing refresher work. Some of the material on the test is covered at the beginning of the semester and teenagers (no offense ) have an incredibly short attention span. Students who take modified tests (for dyslexia, special needs etc.) are pulled out of class and participate in small-group or one-on-one tutoring. This really isn't much different than colleges who have 'dead week' prior to final exams. While no one on your team may meet any of the criteria it is much easier for the district/campus to create a blanket rule and enforce it across the board for all students rather than make exceptions here and there. Exceptions can set a bad precedence if they are not careful.

As far as Easter competition...the only regional my team has ever participated in (we really need to branch out ) has been Lone Star and this is the first time in what seems like years when it wasn't on Easter or Spring Break and you have no idea how happy I am about it!