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During the Monday, November 3 meeting of the Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) School Committee, three of the four members of the committee voiced a preference for the district to adopt a calendar that recognized State and Federal holidays only.
There was no formal vote, and no final decisions have been made. However, Vice Chair Jessica McCready, and members Betsy Sues and Nicole Burnard clearly stated a preference for following State and Federal holidays only. They cited the challenges of including all holiday requests across religious and cultural observances, concerns about processes for handling future requests, and voiced a desire not to put the committee in the position of picking and choosing which days to add to the calendar.
If the committee were to change future district calendars to reflect State and Federal holidays only, existing Jewish holidays, including Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, would no longer be “no school” days on the SPS calendar. Good Friday would also be eliminated as a “no school” day. Christmas is the only religious holiday in both the State and Federal sets of official holidays.
The process to review the calendar was driven, in part, by local advocacy to add religious and cultural observances including Eid, Lunar New Year, and Diwali.
SPS School Committee Karyn Jones voiced concerns about shifting to State and Federal holidays only, citing the fact that many families may have based a decision to move to Sudbury on the fact that certain holidays were on the SPS calendar. She encouraged the committee to bring two calendars forward to an upcoming Tri-District meeting of the SPS School Committee, Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School School Committee and Lincoln Public Schools School Committee.
The SPS committee agreed to bring two options to those discussions — one with just State and Federal holidays, and another that added the four most-requested holidays and cultural observances (during the most recent calendar review process) to the existing SPS calendar.
The next step is a conversation between the three school committees, though representatives of each committee have already stated they believe the decision on any calendar changes should be made independently by each committee.
