Don't you just love how MCPS yanks families around?

Not all of us have $350,000-a-year jobs like our selfless superintendent in this high-tax county. Many of us Montgomery peasant families rely on two incomes.

Our out-of-touch superintendent and our shiny new school board should know how difficult the public school system makes things for families of public school children with their bizarre academic calendar.

Here's the MCPS track record so far for this month at our humble and otherwise happy Seven Locks Elementary School.

MCPS cut the week in half by having no school on November 1 - a Wednesday. Apparently it was inconvenient for the teachers unions to hold the event on a Monday or Friday or - horrors - have their cadres put in some overtime like the rest of us do.

November 7 - a Tuesday - was a "holiday" because of the general election. Because voters needed to use a small corner of the building - the gym - to cast their votes, the entire school had to be shut down.

November 9 and 10 - Thursday and Friday afternoons - "early release" for the kids. No, it's not a prison furlough program. It's for parent-teacher conferences. Asking MCPS to hold them on a single day, say, Friday, apparently is too much to ask.

To say nothing about having school on a federal holiday. MCPS couldn't simply have class or not have class on Veterans' Day. It had to do both.