Staff Writers
What Are All These
Waiver Days?
by Laura Howard and Laura Ingle
Staff Writers
Waiver days: do you wonder why we have these days off school? Are you wondering why some of them are half days? Maybe you’ve caught yourself questioning, “Why are they called ‘waiver days’?” or possibly, “Will we have these days every year?” “Was winter break shortened to have these waiver days?”
Waiver days are called that because a small number of days that students are obligated to go to school are “waived” by the state of Ohio. This means that the days are not taken from winter break or any other place on the calendar.
The need for waiver days also varies for each year; although you may not have noticed, in the 2005-2006 school year we had two waiver days. The days are decided on teachers’ professional development needs.
In order to get the waiver days approved, applications were sent to the state of Ohio. Mrs. Tracy Coleman, Mentor Schools’ Director of Secondary Education, stated, “We had to provide rationale for how the trainings will benefit staff and students in our district, and we have to provide a follow up report to the state on what was accomplished”.
Once the days were approved, they could decide on where the days would be best placed.
We know what you do on waiver days- hang out with friends, sleep in; but what do teachers do on those days?
This year, waiver days were created for teachers to go to Olweus Bullying Prevention and Professional Learning Communities Programs. Bullying prevention is mandatory for all public schools by the state of Ohio, The Olweus program helps the teachers learn about bullying and how to stop it.
It was decided to take advantage of programs early in the school year so that teachers could use the knowledge throughout the year.
Scheduling the days involved some creative planning. Instead of having a whole day off, they had half days in which the administrators had a workshop in the morning (while teachers were at school) and the teachers , administrators, and classroom assistants were taught in the afternoon.
Waiver days: they benefit all of us.