But pain would be an appropriate word to describe what parents, students, and teachers are feeling as DCPS (Jacksonville, FL) adds three extra days to the calendar to fulfill the 900 minimum hours of instruction required by state law.

Despite earlier district assurances that the school year would end as scheduled, May 29, it now seems that three extra days are needed.

First of all, you need to understand that Grumpy Old Teacher (GOT) is not complaining or objecting to the district requiring him to work three more days. In a previous post, he already did the math and figured he was getting paid this year for not working a few days.

DCPS asked for a waiver, but the Florida Department of Education denied it. (Source: an excellent reporter at the local newspaper, The Florida Times-Union. If she says it, she has sourced it well and can back it up. I have sent my own email to the department asking the question, but after seven days, they have not replied.)

Three days grace. Sorry, Duuuuuuuuuuvaaaaaallllllllllllllll, but you ain’t getting it. Three more days to hold class, June 1, June 2, and June 3.

Maybe it’s because these fine state officials forgot to read their New Testaments. (Teachers often feel like they are receiving an Old Testament-style stoning.)

Or maybe our fine commissioner, Richard Corcoran, R-state official, because that capital R is everything, has never experienced grace and, therefore, is unable to extend it to others.

Although GOT would argue that the real adulterers of the public education obligation of the state are those who would give an exclusive to private and virtual schools.

(But maybe the metaphor is running away with him.)

The point of this post is to point out (pun intended) of the foolishness of it all.

Nobody is going to show up for online classes these three extra days of June. Teachers are having a hard enough time now getting kids to show up. Parents are overwhelmed with trying to keep their kids online, or haven’t you been reading their SOS tweets, Facebook posts, Instagram help-me’s, or what should be the latest in coded acronyms: IGU.

(I Give Up.)

We teachers will hold classes. We will honor our contract, the one that requires us to work on the weather days when they are replacing regular school days that were canceled.

But far too many of us will be singing this song: