School Committee Chairwoman SusanMary Redinger opened the March 10 meeting with the acknowledgment that the committee’s previous decision to hold a half-day of school on Dec. 24, 2014, had provoked a burst of phone calls to committee members. That decision had been based on a hotly debated religious holiday policy adopted in 2010, which the committee now appears ready to abandon, or at least modify.
Many callers described Dec. 24 as “a day for travel and for family traditions,” Redinger said. She said the committee had trusted that the half-day of school could have been useful learning time, but that assumption was now in doubt.
“It is not our intent to hold a day of school just to get it on the calendar,” Redinger said. She asked school administrators to come back to the School Committee with a revised calendar. “We are getting the message loud and clear from the community that this needs to be reviewed,” she concluded.
