Having affirmed their decision to hold regular classes on the day before Christmas, School Committee members heard last week how the elementary and Bromfield school staffs plan to make it work. For the past four years, school has been in session on religious holidays, but 2014 is the first time classes will be held on Dec 24.
It will be “business as usual,” Superintendent Linda Dwight told the committee. There will be no special holiday parties or celebrations. “The plan at both the elementary school and Bromfield is to proceed with a regular day of school,” she said.
Teachers will produce regular plans, but the school day will be three hours long with early dismissal. Classes at the high school will be 20 to 25 minutes long; those at the Hildreth Elementary School will be “specials,” untimed classes outside the normal school routine. Buses will run. There will be no lunch.
A focus on the rights of minorities
Dwight said administrators and teachers are committed to making the day a teachable moment. Bromfield Principal Jim O’Shea and Assistant Principal Scott Hoffman will meet with the combined sophomore, junior, and senior students on Dec. 13 or 17 to show a video and conduct a panel discussion to explain the history of the decision and reasons to hold school on Dec. 24. The emphasis will be on the need to protect minority rights, Dwight said. Students in middle school and the upper grades of the elementary school will see the video as well.
“The point the schools want to make,” said Dwight, “is that we may be a Christian-celebrating community, but that isn’t everyone, and that is not representative of everyone.”
“I’m really proud to be part of this committee and this system,” said School Committee member Kirsten Wright last week. “The kids can really learn from this. It’s an opportunity for all of us, and I really appreciate it.”
Dwight said she and her fellow administrators have no idea how many students will show up for the Dec. 24 classes. School policy states that “the right of parents to excuse their children from school attendance for the purposes of religious observance is understood and supported by the Harvard Public Schools.”
The policy, adopted in 2010, also says that the schools may reconsider their policy of remaining open on all religious holidays if upon an analysis of the prior year’s attendance data, they “determine that overall attendance will be such as to render the opening of school impractical or uneconomic.”
