Above: Last week, school committee members voted on a recommendation to add more holidays to the school calendar. The issue divided opinions of the working group studying the problem, and still needs to be resolved. (images edited from meeting packet.)
Tomorrow morning, the Southborough School Committee will “revote” on the administration’s recommended calendar for the upcoming school year.
That follows a tie vote last week, and the potential for a different decision than the one made by the Regional and Northborough school committees.
The version adopted for Algonquin Regional High School and Northborough K-8 would add to the list of days off for significant religious/cultural holidays. (That was referred to as “Calendar 1”.)
The Southborough School Committee might instead choose a version that eliminates existing religious holidays — “Calendar 4”. Advocates for #4 sought to avoid future debates on which other holidays are worthy of observing in the school’s calendar.
The discussion and vote took place during the March 12th Combined School Committees Meeting. The committees voted on a recommendation from Superintendent Gregory Martineau to adopt Calendar 1.
His recommendation was also the first choice of 75% of the 16 member Calendar Advisory Working Group. Only 2 members completely rejected it.
In contrast, 8 members rejected Calendar 4. That was even more than the number that rejected the “Calendar 2” option which would have scheduled half days on the holidays. Option 3 which split which days were observed versus half days was the least popular. (Click images below for working group vote details.)
Southborough’s committee will revote (hopefully with all five members) at a special meeting this Thursday morning, March 20th. The virtual meeting is scheduled for 7:00 am. 1
It is uncertain how the Northborough and Regional Committees will proceed if Southborough goes a different way.
After reading the room but prior to the vote, Southborough School Committee member Roger Challen (who sided against Calendar 1), asked what would happen if the committees took differing stances. Martineau said that the administration prefers to operate under a shared district calendar. He posited that the committees could ask the Calendar Working Group to come up with an alternative recommendation.
But Challen got clarity that the decision of one committee doesn’t veto the independent decision by others. The three districts could operate on different schedules.
During the discussion, one point of agreement was that there was no perfect calendar solution to meet the needs of everyone in the community.
Calendar 1 keeps the current Jewish & Christian holidays (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Good Friday) and adds Diwali, Lunar New Year and Eid al-Fitr. Members referred to that as adding only two more holidays to the school calendar.
Based on what days the six observances fall on in different years, it translates to 3-5 total religious holidays in each of the next three school calendars.2
Some members expressed concerns that Calendar 1 shows preferential treatment for some religions while others in our increasingly diverse community might have holidays that are overlooked and treated as less valued.
Jennifer Primack of the Regional School Committee was one of the members who admitted to being torn. She noted that early on in the process, she put together a list of “all of the major religious holidays”. She said including them would be close to an extra month of holidays. But she acknowledged inequity based on Christmas falling during the December break in any of the calendars, including #4.
Regional member Kathleen Harragan Polutchko said that she had served on every calendar committee for decades. She pointed out that calendar study was initially prompted by complaints about too frequent learning disruptions at the start of the school year. And she noted that the recommendation for #1 didn’t come with a “process” for adding another religious request in the future.
Polutchko described Calendar 1’s as a compromise that “puts me in a very uncomfortable position of feeling like I’m determining which religion is more deserving than another”. Between the growing diversity, disruptions, and childcare issues for working parents, she advocated for Calendar 4.
She also opined:
But this conversation is so draining to everybody, our community, our administration, our schools, that we really need to stop having it every single solitary year. And that’s another thing that Calendar 4 accomplishes.
Lauren Bailey Jones told the committees that Martineau showed the working group data that showed there weren’t “dramatic” differences caused by the “learning disruptions” caused by additional days off during the school year.
As for childcare, Southborough School Committee member Kamali O’Meally (who supported Calendar 1) directly addressed the public, calling for collaborative support:
We need the community to support the vote that’s made tonight, and especially when it comes to childcare and creative solutions for the days that are off
O’Meally called out to parent teacher organizations (SOS and the NPTO) and entrepreneurs, “let’s work together”.
Answering Primack on how the administration could help working parents grappling with the days off, Martineau said that they could work with the Southborough Extended Day Program and the Northborough version that is in the works. He also noted that having less holiday interruptions means school gets out earlier in June, where families will still have to deal with finding daycare/camps for kids.
Members who supported Calendar 4 stressed that staff and students should make use of the religious policy to take the personal day. The administration is working on improving its policy (and communication) to ensure students aren’t penalized for missing the days. (The revised policy was included in that meeting’s packet for a first reading.)3
Martineau advocated for his Calendar 1 recommendation by stating the school committees’ responsibility is to schedule 180 days between the contractual timeframes of August 25th and June 30th. He followed:
The school committee job is not too determine, “Should we have this religious observance off or that”, but how to best maximize attendance over that 180 days. If you’re scheduling a day that you know a certain aspect of students are not going to be able to attend and participate in the day and you have flexibility within those goalposts, I think that’s a consideration the school committee needs to make. . .
How can you best schedule the 180 days that allows the most number of students to participate in those 180 days without having to make a difficult choice around, for example, observing their religion or attending their academics, two of which I would share are probably very valued and highly important to many of our families.
In the end, the Northborough School Committee voted 3-2 support and Regional approved it 8-2.4
Southborough voted last. O’Meally and Laura Kauffmann supported Calendar 1. Challen and Chelsea Malinowski opposed it. (I didn’t catch any explanation for Malinowski’s position. Challen had discussed being torn, but made some arguments in favor of #4.) Member Alan Zulick was absent.
Members agreed the issue was important enough to revote when they had a full committee.
You can read Martineau’s memo and the working group’s report here. You can watch the discussion on YouTube. Public comments begin here and the committee discussion here.5
- You can view the agenda here. It doesn’t list public comment. If you want members to consider your opinion, you may need to reach out in advance. (Their email address is ssc@nsboro.k12.ma.us).
- There were inconsistencies in the packet for how Lunar New Year details were described under each calendar option. To clarify, it falls on February break in 2026, a Saturday in 2027, and a regular weekday in 2028. Other holidays that fall on a weekend in at least one of the next three school calendar years are Rosh Hashanah and Eid al-Fitr.
- Martineau asked for feedback on revisions to the religious policy (and other reviewed policies) be submitted to the policy subcommittees by May 1st so they could prepare for a 2nd reading at the next scheduled combined committee meeting in June. You can find all of the policies the subcommittees are working on, and submit written feedback, here.
- For Northborough, the votes in favor were by Lauren Bailey-Jones, Joan Frank, and Kristen Willems Tietjen. The opposed were Kelly Guenette and Bryce MacKnight. That was followed by the Regional Committee’s votes. In favor were Sean O’Shea, Joan Frank, Paul Desmond, Kathleen Howland, Christopher Lacasse, Jennifer Primack, Matthew Spencer, and John Wysocki. Opposed were Kathleen Harragan Polutchko and Christopher Covino.
- There was a technical glitch just prior to this point in the video of the meeting. It’s unclear how many minutes of Martineau’s introductory comments were lost, but it appeared to be before the committee debated the recommendation and asked questions.
