SATIRE: This is parody. Not a real news report.
WESLACO — Citing what internal memos call a “critical weekday shortage,” South Texas ISD announced this week that the calendar year contains only 260 weekdays and that the cleanest fix is canceling 10 paid vacation days belonging to 172 custodians, bus drivers, and maintenance workers, which officials described as “the only part of the calendar we can legally reach.”
“We ran the numbers, and our employees were being paid for days that do not occur,” said Dr. Orlando Peña, Associate Superintendent of Temporal Resources, speaking beside a laminated poster of a calendar. “Somewhere in this district, ten extra days were hiding. We found them. They were in the custodians’ vacation. That’s not a cut — that’s a rescue.”
An exhaustive audit traced the surplus days to vacation time after ruling out every other location, including administrative conferences, the parking committee, and February. Asked why the district’s own 260 assigned work days were never on the table, Peña explained those days are “load-bearing.”
District Rules Out Asking The Year For More Weekdays
Officials said they considered alternatives before deleting the vacation, including petitioning the Gregorian calendar for an extension, leasing spare weekdays from neighboring Valley districts, and declaring a one-time “Double Monday” in October. Each was deemed cost-prohibitive. A proposal to simply accept that vacation days are paid without being physically located anywhere on the calendar was dismissed as “mathematically provocative.”
“We did reach out to the year,” Peña confirmed. “The year declined to comment. At that point, our hands were tied.”
Overtime Will Arrive Once A Month, Which Is More Than Ten
To make workers whole, the district will offer overtime — a substance employees report materializes roughly once a month and is “not much.” Officials defended the arithmetic: “Once a month is twelve times a year. Twelve is more than ten. By our accounting, staff come out ahead, and frankly always have.”
Asked what happens in an emergency, the district distributed a laminated card instructing employees to “please see the previous answer.” Weslaco custodian Marisol Cavazos, who has mopped the same hallway since 2016, said she still has questions. “They told me ten of my days never existed,” she said. “Fine. Then explain why my back hurts on all of them.”
Workers have since circulated a petition and contacted the RGV American Federation of Teachers, which confirmed it also counted the weekdays and got 260, adding that this was “never the point.”
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why does the year only have 260 weekdays?
A: It always has. District leadership describes the discovery as “the kind of thing you don’t want to learn during budget season.”
Q: Can staff make up the lost vacation with overtime?
A: Yes. Overtime arrives about once a month, which the district notes is technically more than ten, assuming the months cooperate.
