East Greenwich School Calendar Settled After Compromise

EAST GREENWICH, RI—The East Greenwich School Committee approved a school calendar for the 2016-17 academic year on Tuesday night after forging a compromise to keep school from starting too early in August and ending too late in June.

A number of key issues factored into the discussion before the committee finally settled on a calendar, including: the observance of Jewish holidays in October and concerns about massive absences, a desire to preserve February vacation to disinfect schools and balance family scheduling concerns, primary and election days in the fall and health and safety concerns related to students stuck in hot buildings in the summer months.

An ad-hoc committee that studied the school calendar concluded that East Greenwich would see more absences on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. Their recommendation was based in part on testimony from residents and local Rabbis.

School Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Mark said the committee "got a lot of feedback that it would have a significant impact on them" and there is a sense that "it would have much more impact on our community than it would have others."

Mark also said her concerns about students being in the buildings in August and June is a concern shared across the community. Feedback given by the community indicated that "the calendar should never start the school year until the very end of August" and the committee must make "every best effort to end by June unless miraculously we can come up with money for A/C in the buildings."

The calendar now marks the start of the school year on Aug. 31 and ends on June 19. An earlier proposed calendar ended on June 21, but realistically, that means with snow days the school year should end a few days beyond that, Mark said.

Ending on June 21, as originally proposed, is problematic from a health and safety perspective, she said.

Chopping February break would solve the problem, but, in the words of Committee Member Matt Plain, "February break has advantages."

The district would see absences since the week is often vacation time for many families no matter the school calendar. Other school districts still observe the break. And, Plain said, it's a chance for the spread of sickness during peak cold season to see some abatement.

Another issue: continuity of learning. Committee members expressed a desire to avoid starting the year on a day in the middle of the week as it did in the current year. And some of the early weeks in the calendar were dotted with off days, chopping up the calendar.

Mark said that looking at the first half of the school year in an earlier draft of the calendar showed it was "choppy."

Committee Member David Osborne introduced the idea of adding a school day on Nov. 23, the day before Thanksgiving, and on Dec. 23. Both days were previously marked off as holidays.

Osborne said that it appeared an assumption that Dec. 23 was a contractually-obliged holiday was incorrect. In fact, he said, a close reading of the paraprofessional contract shows that the contract states Dec. 23 is a paid holiday if "it falls in the workweek and schools are closed on the holiday," Osborne said. In the upcoming year, Christmas falls on a weekend.

In addition, Osborne noted, Election Day is not necessarily required to be a paid holiday. To address the problem with voters at school buildings during the day, designating it a professional development day would work.

Nov. 23, which was originally a PD day, would be freed up to become a regular school day.

Those changes "get [us] two days on the back end in late June," Osborne said.

Committee members agreed that some people would rather the days be freed up with the elimination of February break and it will be impossible to please every single person.

But, noted Committee Member Mary Ellen Winters, the following year will not have an election. And, she said, like last year, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur will fall on the weekend.

"Right there is is three days," Winters said. "That's why we opted to leave it that way with February vacation and when we remake [the calendar] next year it will be like last year and we could get a whole week earlier for the following year."

Before approving the calendar, Mercurio said that some notions of school calendars and instruction time are rooted in the past.

"The concept of continuity of learning is different for a student who has access to content twenty-four hours in a day and 365 days a year," Mercurio said. "If we weren't in class, we missed it. . . .when students who go to this high school. . .when they don't go to class, there are many ways to be engaged."

Also, said Committee Member Yan Sun, focusing on consistency makes it harder to argue for eliminating winter break.

Some have suggested to get rid of it "next year and we can add it back," Sun said.

That's "not consistency" she said.

Grab a PDF copy of the school calendar HERE.