The school district has released a list of significant dates. Since some “Early Releases” begin as soon as September 9th, I wanted to give parents an advance heads up.
School specific early dismissals aren’t included in the district calendar. (Each K-8 school has four early dismissals that aren’t system wide. And Algonquin has one.)
Below, I’ve integrated the early dismissals and school holidays into one chronological list.
So if you have kids headed into Southborough public schools next week, mark your calendars for the dates that effect your family:
- September 1 – No school — Labor Day
- September 9 — Trottier and Neary — Early Release.
- September 18 — Finn and Woodward — Early Release
- September 25 – No school — Rosh Hashanah
- October 13 – No school — Columbus Day/Heritage Day
- October 16 – Algonquin — Early Release
- October 23 — Finn and Woodward — Early Release
- October 31 — Finn and Woodward — Early Release
- November 4 – No school — Professional Development
- November 11 – No school — Veterans Day
- November 13 — Trottier and Neary — Early Release.
- November 14 — Trottier and Neary — Early Release.
- November 26 – All schools – Early Release
- November 27, 28 – No school — Thanksgiving Recess
- December 1 – No school — Professional Development
- December 24-January 2 – No school — Winter Vacation
- January 19 – No school — Martin Luther King Day
- February 16-20 – No school — February Vacation
- March 4 — Trottier — Early Release
- April 3 – No school — Good Friday
- April 9 — Neary — Early Release
- April 9 — Finn and Woodward — Early Release
- April 20-24 – No school — April Vacation
- May 25 – No school — Memorial Day
(Trottier photo by Susan Fitzgerald; remaining images from the schools’ websites)
I think our school district is violating a MA state law regarding student learning time.
I’m not at all a fan of these early release days. It gives me the feeling that our schools are trying to do the bare minimum. It especially started irking me when we went from the 185 day school year down to the 180 AND kept these early release days. This made me wonder what the minimum length of the school day was to count toward the required 180. Well it turns out many states require 5 hours, but MA does not, it just requires 900 hours per year total which we do meet. HOWEVER, on the below linked webpage describing the MA state learning time requirements it states: “Every school committee shall schedule a school year which includes at least 185 school days”. I assume the rather odd way our district created it’s end of the year calendar is to try and loophole their way out of this requirement. I think their loophole isn’t valid and that they are violating the law. Those days are clearly labeled “makeup days”, which by definition are definitely not ‘scheduled’ as real school year days.
Bullet point 4 also bothers me, the laws explicitly tries to encourage more, and we are trying to find a loophole to do less! We are a town that is more well off than many and our teachers are very well paid by comparison to national averages. We are better than doing the bare minimum.
http://www.doe.mass.edu/lawsregs/603cmr27.html?section=03
You might want to bring this up during one of the school committee meetings. They have always had a policy of open discussion of questions and issues brought up during “open comment” time. They have won awards on their responsiveness to citizen inquiries.
Yes, I am being totally sarcastic.
Thank you Beth for posting this. Thank you SB Resident for posting your comment. This is quite concerning indeed. In additional, what is the status of ARHS’s discussion on starting school later in the morning? I signed a petition to support it but have not heard any updates at all on this issue. Beth-Do you have any insights?
So I think there might be a logistics issue with starting later. There are a limited number of buses available and the same ones that take the high schoolers also take the grade school kids later.
I completely agree that most high school kids are NOT morning people. Maybe their first period could be an elective or study hall or something that would work with a sleepy brain.
The Start School Later movement is a long term initiative. Those involved realized it wasn’t feasible to find a solution in time for this fall. They may even look to fall 2016 rather than 2015.
As for their progress – the most recent update was their survey results. Their website posted in May:
“Thanks to everyone who took the survey regarding school start time. Here are the key results:
Number of survey respondents: 332 (87% of which were parents)
Percent of respondents from each town: Northborough – 48.19%; Southborough – 51.81%
Percent of respondents who want to move the Algonquin start time later: 82.55%
Most popular start time (in 15 minute increments between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m.): 8:00 – 8:15 a.m.”
Thank you Beth! This is very helpful!
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article from a medical doctor about this issue. This issue is gaining traction everywhere it seems.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/teens-need-later-start-to-school-day-doctors-group-says-1408939263