My wife said those "teacher prep" days are another example of fraud. She actually dreaded most of the "early release days" and "teacher workdays" since the time was burned away with the most boring, meaningless, mandatory training sessions.
See Post 49 in this thread.
Where I live, those half days are used to go to COSTCO. it is a good place to go if you want to speak to your kids’ teachers. They may be required to spend some of the time at their desks now, but in the beginning, that was all that happened.
The schools (and the town) ow use Facebook for communication, so you cannot ask any questions or have any communication with members of the school board or city council without the threat of Facebook canceling. WA residents are facing an initiative vote on teachers refusing to notify parents about their child’s efforts to change gender pronouns or name at school. So, what did Ferndale do? They shut down the email accounts of candidates for the school board. You have to contact them through Facebook.