Above: Next year’s calendar will allow the traditional start to the calendar year, plus fully observe the religious holidays incorporated this year. (image from meeting packet).
Last night, the Regional School Committee recast its vote on the district calendar for the 2026-2027 school year. Although there were split opinions, the majority approved the option supported by teacher unions and adopted by the Southborough School Committee.
The Northborough School Committee still needs to officially vote. But they already advocated for the “Option 5” calendar in a straw poll in their last monthly meeting. That means the calendar will be the version employed across the three districts and ten schools next year. (You can view the image right and open the pdf file here.)
This year, the committee again heard passionate support for and opposition to calendars that include observing the religious holidays of Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, Good Friday, Diwali, Lunar New Year, and Eid al-Fitr.
The first three holidays have been included in the calendar for decades. The last three were added in recent years to be more inclusive of increasing diversity in the schools. But some residents have argued that including the holidays is insensitive to families whose religions aren’t included.
This week, parent Nia Benoit, who is Orthodox Christian, reiterated comments she has made in the past. She told the committee that she finds calendar “selective and exclusive rather than inclusive”. And she told the committee that she has heard from many that agree. Benoit advocated for “pairing a lean calendar with robust accommodation policies” to treat all religions equally.
She was followed by commenter Mitch Cohen who continued to advocate for the inclusivity of continuing to include the six holidays.
Over the past several years, members of the Jewish community have expressed upset that after decades of their high holidays being included, they have had to fight again and again to keep Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah as school holidays.
But the backlash against observing the holidays has also included some who have noted that their holidays are on the observed list. The opposing arguments include that while families can choose to pull kids out of school for religious holidays, foisting holidays on the entire community causes a burden for working parents and is disruptive to education.
In the many committee meetings to deal with the issue, committee members have made clear that they have heard a lot of conflicting, passionate feedback from the community. Members have debated how best to handle the issues and expressed conflicting emotions.
This week, Northborough member Joan Frank said that while she hated to say it, she believed that the schools need to form another subcommittee to study the issue again next year. She’d like to eventually get back to a place where they could issue calendars three years at a time.
The votes this month for Option 5 were to replace the Option 3 that was previously adopted by the same two committees. That calendar was based on a concept that students in the district would observe all of the same religious holidays incorporated into the current calendar. But Yom Kippur and Eid al-Fitr would be treated as Professional Development Days for staff. Good Friday would have been observed as a holiday. And there was no clear explanation for how the holidays that fall on weekends next year would be treated in subsequent years.
Last year, the committees had discussed a desire to try following the same model for a few years in a row in order to better understand its impact on the schools and community.
As I’ve previously covered, the reason that the district didn’t initially recommend following that model as this year was based on restrictions in the contract with Algonquin teachers and the late timing of Labor Day. The Option 5 calendar was a solution developed in coordination with the teachers associations.
You can read more about this year’s complications and the Calendar options that were presented for consideration here.
One additional detail worth noting. . . It’s not specified on the calendar, but Martineau told the Southborough School Committee that next year’s April 30th Professional Development Day will fall on Orthodox Good Friday. In this week’s meeting, Benoit referred to that day as one of the most holy holidays in the Christian Orthodox calendar.
