Despite significant absences of students and professionals on Good Friday this year, the day will remain a regular school day next year even though a minority of committee members and administrative staff no longer support the notion as they did the previous year.
Absenteeism on April 3, Good Friday, was higher than usual, ranging from 10 to 21-percent of students absent, up from the usual 4 to 6 percent.
Mattapoisett School Committee Chairman James Higgins spoke strongly against the Good Friday school day, saying it had traditionally been a day off from school for hundreds of years and it should not have been changed.
“I think it was a mistake. I think we clearly received a message from the community.” Higgins said he heard concerns from many residents about the change and said the committees represent the taxpayers who want Good Friday off.
“I wholeheartedly disagree,” said Tina Rood, Rochester School Committee member. “We made this decision because we are a public school.” She said the data reflecting only a single Good Friday is insufficient to assume the coming years would be the same. “[The data] is very deceptive because it is one day in time…. I think we need a larger body of knowledge than this particular data point.”
Marion School Committee member and Chairman of the Superintendency Union Christine Winters said the district had established some annual days off as a result of significantly low attendance year after year, for example the day before Thanksgiving, questioning the continuance of the Good Friday school day.
“I think as we look at these numbers here, this is far past the threshold,” said Winters. She looked to the data from this year, saying she did not expect this to be a “one shot deal.”
“I don’t think next year is going to be any different,” said Winters. “Are we really doing the right thing?”
A number of high school students managed to convince their parents that Good Friday was an optional day of school, said Principal Mike Devoll, and 42 students in the district were dismissed early from school after tending to some assessments and assignments. The magic time for dismissal at the high school, said Devoll, was 10:40 am – the time a student can technically be counted as present at school.
Devoll said that the School Committee’s insistence on following the Massachusetts Department of Education policy that no tests or assessments be planned for the day unless students opting to observe the religious holiday are allowed to make them up added to the appearance that Good Friday was an optional day.
“It does sound like an optional day,” said Devoll. “If it’s going to be a school day, let’s make it a school day.”
Rochester and ORR School Committee member Robin Rounseville, who voted in favor of making Good Friday a school day, defended her decision last year, saying in response to Higgins’s earlier point, “’It’s been done this way’…I don’t necessarily think that’s a good reason to continue to do something.”
Higgins made the cumbersome motion “to not make Good Friday a school day,” confusing some other members as to what a ‘yay’ or ‘nay’ vote would support.
Before the vote, the committee looked to Superintendent Doug White for his opinion on the matter.
“When I look at it, I have to take the data that I have in front of us,” said White. He noted the high absentee percentage compared with the average daily percentage, referenced the shortage of substitute teachers to cover absent staff on Good Friday and said, “That’s a concern for me as an educator.”
Rood pointed out that, if returned to a day off, the Good Friday holiday would be made up by tacking on an extra day at the end of the year.
“A day in June is not the same as a day in March,” Rood said.
The two Joint School Committees – The ORR School Committee and the Superintendency Union comprised of the Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester School Committees – took the vote, with the superintendency side voting 3-5 to keep Good Friday a school day, and the ORR side tied at 4-4, resulting in a failure of the motion.
Also during the meeting, White sat through the School Committees’ annual review of his performance that fell in his favor with the majority of comments ranking him proficient and sometimes “wholeheartedly proficient” in certain areas.
This year, the two chairs of the Joint School Committees relied on information compiled from the three local committee chairmen as a way to more thoroughly examine how individual committee members rated White’s performance.
The Marion School Committee commented in a report, “Doug has worked harder this year than any previous year … and provided consistent communication and comment engagement as a whole.”
A handful of committee members rated White as “needs improvement” in the area of instructional leadership, but also rated him highly in several other areas.
Marion School Committee member Joseph Scott said turning to White, “This is the first year he’s really had a full staff of administration beneath him. And I think this year was a very, very good year. I’m happy to see the place we’re in right now.”
“I know as a district and as an administrative team that we still have some work to do,” said White. “And we will make sure each child in the three towns has the best [educational] experience.”
Also during the meeting, in addition to the Good Friday school day next year, both committees vote in favor of the 2015/2016 school year calendar as presented that night, which will include four additional early release days to accommodate eight more hours of professional development.
The Joint School Committee will not meet again until the start of the next school year in September.
By Jean Perry
