By Alice Waugh
School will start next fall after Labor Day and end by June 24 if the School Committee votes in favor of the proposed calendar at its January 23 meeting.
Partly due to unhappiness in some quarters over how late the 2012-13 school year ran, the committee surveyed parents about their preferences in regard to when the school year would start and whether to have no school on Rosh Hashanah, Good Friday, and a day set aside for parent/teacher conferences.
Fifty-nine percent of the 363 survey respondents preferred school to start after Labor Day, according to a letter to parents from Superintendent of Schools Becky McFall.
Thirty percent of parents and faculty who responded said they thought school should not be in session on the religious holidays. If school were held on those days, McFall said in her letter that the school would have to hire 12 to 19 substitutes to compensate for staff who were absent as one or more of their five paid personal days. “Finding this many substitutes on a given day would compromise instruction and place a high logistical burden on the district,” she wrote.
If the calendar is approved, school will start on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2014 and end on June 24, 2015 if all five snow days are used.