BCAT News

After collecting feedback from the community, the School Committee has voted on the 25-26 school calendar. The School Committee has voted for school to start on September 2nd before Labor Day and end on June 18th without snow days. 

Public school systems are legally required to be in session for 180 days. Every year the School Committee and Superintendent come up with a school calendar that will outline how we are going to meet this requirement.

There are many complicated decisions that need to be made while making this calendar. These include what religious holidays we should have off, how long winter break should be, should we start school before or after Labor Day, and more. 

This year the School Committee and Superintendent sent out a survey to receive feedback on these discussions for the 25-26 calendar. The survey laid out three different calendars they were considering.

In the first option, school would start on the 27th before Labor Day. Winter break would start on December 24th and the last day of school with no snow days would be June 15th.

In the second option, school still starts before Labor Day on the 27th but winter break would start on December 20th. The last day of school would be June 17th.

In the third option, school would start after Labor Day on September 2nd. Winter break would start on December 24th and school would end on June 17th. 

The survey results were 21% for option one, 33% for option two, and 41% for option three. In the final decision the School Committee and Superintendent tried to reflect these results with the new calendar they approved. 

The survey also asked some questions about professional development days and giving more planning time to teachers. At this point in time the professional development days are set for next year but the more planning time for teachers is still being discussed.

On the survey questions were also asked about what religious holidays people think we should have off. Currently the only religious holiday we have off is Good Friday. The decision for us to have this day off seems to be more of a staffing issue though because a lot of teachers end up taking off that day.

What seems to be the most likely solution to the issue with religious holidays will be for there to be no school days off on any religious holidays. Students and staff will then be encouraged to use religious days to individually take off the holidays they celebrate. It is possible we will still continue to have Good Friday off because of the staffing issue though. 

The purpose of this survey was to gain community feedback on the school calendar and what days we should have off. The survey received 857 responses, but the survey was only sent directly to parents and teachers. The survey was not sent directly to students. When you open the survey there is an option to click if you were a student taking the survey but the only way a kid would have been able to take the survey is if an adult told them about it.

Vanessa Morris, BHS freshman, said she was confused on why the form was not sent to students. Vanessa said if she was able to vote she would have voted for the second option.

“I’m okay with school starting earlier, you know, it’s not great, but I’ll take it,” Vanessa said. “I do need like winter break. It ends up being way more essential to me than school starting early.”

BHS freshman, Ishita Upadhyay, agrees with Vanessa that the second option is the one she prefers.

“It would lead to earlier breaks and whilst I would like to end school early the lack of time between breaks and stuff would be annoying,” Ishita said.

Ishita also expressed wanting to be able to be part of the survey. She said she wished she had known about it. 

“I wouldn’t mind [school] starting before Labor Day personally. I’d actually prefer it to a longer wait for break,” Ishita said. 

These are the types of opinions the survey was looking to collect. It was possible that students could have shared their voice through their parents but not receiving their own version of the survey made it a lot harder for them to do so. This means that many students probably didn’t get a voice in this crucial decision that would impact them the most.

Surveys like this for the community are great but it’s important all people impacted by an issue are included. Everyone deserves a voice. 

At the end of the day, everyone has their opinions and it’s great that some people got to share theirs but the final decision on what the calendar for the 25-26 school year will look like is up to the School Committee and they have made their decision whether all people agree with it or not.