001um because although homework might be excused tests might not be assigned necessarily but it in the importance of being in the classroom and getting that feedback from the teachers and your peers around is so important and is so tragic to lose and having to like weigh that like do I honor my family or my studies can I can I ask you a question yes um cuz I don't remember this and I don't understand what's up there do you want me to help yes okay so we took all four schools and we looked at on these um three holidays um over a couple years what is in general across 180 days the average number of dismissals the average attendance and the average number of tardies and then we looked at these holidays and said is there
002a significant difference and so um D devali um you see that there was an upti and dismissals but at the end of the day our attendance and do sh is pretty excellent so 22% increases is really only two kids oh whereas Pine Hill had 11% increase in tardies which equates to two students if you look at Lunar New Year the only one school that had a statistical well not even statistical a uptick in attendance um variation was the middle school I don't know what happened on that day but we had 16 tardies um and then eight uh early dismissals and um Eid no no substantial shifts and it what that's interesting average attendance would be so this is where I get like two in my brain to so is that statistically significant or is that
003not based on our typical attendance I would say it's it's not because the numbers are so little our is so good could be in a day right I also I'm sorry it is interesting to compared to the 40% of responders of the survey who said that they would like a combination or they need the accommodations compared to those who are actually taking the day off right it also depends on whether these days fall on a Friday or Monday and somebody might be taking a long weekend um there was one year something fell on the 22nd of December so then people were out the 22nd the 23rd and then all the way through whether or not they celebrated that holiday I don't know that was a huge uptick but we kind of took that as people
004just extending the winter break um okay this data shows this was from our research shows comparable uh top districts to our district and the uh holidays that they celebrate um so two that I want to point out is Welsley and hackington they both uh acknowledge all the holidays that we do as well as Dali Lunar New Year and Eid and could we just not get the data for conquer they don't dashes me they don't yeah whatever Dash the dash they don't have and then these are districts um that have only mandated so secular calendars um and then these are local private schools that um and the holidays that they take off in addition to in addition to secular okay so when including the mandated holidays and the other holidays included our calendar we currently attend
005181 school days and this is the proposed like the assumed day of scheduled ending with snow days and without snow days in the next upcoming 10 years and then if you add the three days that are in the three holidays that are in consideration which is the Lunar New Year devali and Eid it actually only averages out to about 2 days added on to each um year because sometimes they might fall in the weekends or in already School scheduled breaks with only like uh up in like 2032 being like the de the year the only year in the next 10 years that all three days would be added whereas in 2027 only one more day would be added so that's an interesting to think about yes yeah and that doesn't include um we could decide
006to drop it from 181 to 180 although I understand there may be some issues with um professional days yes we'd have to negotiate the professional days yeah yeah so that's not necessarily a done deal I'm not saying we necessarily think that's a good idea but if we did that then each of the numbers at the bottom would go down by one if that were to be considered then it would only be an average of one day added to the calendar so quick question because we haven't really approved calendars this far forward did you get the we Haven right um did you get the end date with how do you choose the starting date was it August 30th every year or what did you the Wednesday before Labor Day that's what you chose con this Denny
007and I perfect Friday night project he on his couch M me on mine and we just split it up thank you do we have any data about how frequently we've had snow days over the past I don't know five years or whatever I'm just looking at like 628 versus 621 for example in 2627 doesn't seem like a big difference but and it came through in some of the comments right Pine Hill doesn't have air conditioning which I know is a whole another conversation that we're having but it's a it's a difference so I'm curious how frequently or if there's any sense of like how often do we even have snow B it seems like not very often not very often I mean I've been a parent in the district now for 11 years and I
008can't think of a year that we had more than two okay 2015 yeah 2015 we had like one a week for six weeks but but now I think with the extreme temperature that you're experiencing we can't really rely on not having yeah and another variation too is depending on um the year and where um Christmas which is a federally Mand holiday and New Year's fall which is also a Fally mandated holiday sometimes we get only a week off for winter break sometimes we get two so that pushes things out too like next year we get well depending on what you decide could have two full weeks and then like juneth is probably impacting that 262 it pushes you out last day of school Monday that nobody right nobody wants everybody's get that right any other
009questions no um and then these are just general agreements as like a school account uh task force we came up with so we want to educate students about various holidays as they occur throughout the year um one of the proposals tonight is adding only three holidays but then we want to also include education about all the holidays that might occur and that students in our community might celebrate um we want to also ensure that students and faculty adhere to school committee policies relative to attendance and cours work on and around various holidays um and consider the impact of scheduled athletic events and extracurricular activities on and around various holidays because some any holidays that aren't cons considered a day off from school there could be an athletic event scheduled on that day uh you also
010thank strong community support for starting December vacation on or before the 24th not necessarily for religious reasons but rather to extend uh the break and um of course you all have that decision to decide when it starts and when it doesn't but um the 24th is not included in federal inated holidays and then this is the school committee's policy imdc um teachers should use good judgment and be especially sensitive to the feelings of students who might not wish to partic ipate for religious reasons requests for excusal and school activities associated with these holidays should be granted when students are absent from school for the purpose of religious observances during religious holidays is it it is expected that one teachers should not in good faith conduct special or unique activities which will cause those students to
011miss out on an important curriculum event two teachers should not in good faith administer quizzes test or tests on that day uh three teachers will homework expectations reasonable and the due date will be extended as needed to allow for religious observances four teachers will provide opportunity and time to make up any work missed on that day as defined in the student handbook five teachers will give extra help and additional support to those who requires such attention and finally six teachers will not in good faith require projects or long-term assessments due on the day or of or the day after a religious holiday so as Fredick mentioned we conducted a second survey which um I guess if I just boil it down we just wanted to see what our community members preferred so um our first
012option was only the federally mandated holidays our second option was the status quo and our third option was the ad three option so the Lunar New York duali and e um and as you can tell obviously students the overwhelming majority chose adding three of those holidays um for our families they preferred the status quo and for our staff um they also uh preferred the same and then we also wanted to see what we want to do with Friday did we want to have it a school day off an early release or um actually have school on that day and students again they wanted that day off um the families wanted it a school day and the staff preferred the early release sorry can I ask a question I'm really hung up on these numbers a
013little bit I'm just trying to understand is this a fair representation of our community like having 436 responses and 1,200 families these numbers are statistically significant the the average days absent is not just because the way these are signicant okay just put in perspective the library just did a survey and they got 10% of the population and are pretty happy with it yeah and and being someone who gives a lot of surveys this is high for us that's what I'm trying to this is an important topic yeah I'm trying to understand like yeah and so I just wanted to also um synthesize what we found from these surveys um and a quote that was particularly um uh that stood out to all of us was um a quote from the staff who said that the
014most Equitable solution is to create a cular or federal holiday calendar and that their suggestion was that the high school should create a no assessment calendar that recognizes the need for students to be able to take a day off without worry that they will fall behind with regards to making up assessments um and then if we also go on to the parents um another quote that also stood out to us was um a parent saying that giving the increasing diversity in our community that they personally believe that it would work best to remove all non-federal holidays um as it would allow us to treat all religions and cultural holidays equally and give everyone a fair opportunity to request accommodations as needed um and those were the two um quotes that I really wanted to highlight
015because that's what um the calendar task force was also um talking about in our conversations um and then also just the considerations um for this betterly mandated holidays only option was the consistent consistency of learning throughout the year um our access to learning um prior to Spring mcast and a which is huge in all three of our our schools um and also with um the air conditioning at Pine Hill I know a teacher did bring up um in the survey that um they wanted a shorter year so that they don't have to teach students in the hot building um because it' be easier and also Al families would need that additional child care in case um a caregiver or a parent um needs to go to work on a day that school's off and then
016also students and families have greater option for the summer travels summer programs especially in like high school when all all of those start up and then also um like summer camp and everything and then another thing was the last day of from June 10th to June 16 assuming that there are no school days as Amber talked about and then also the DS with children in the district in the other districts may have conflicting schedules so yeah any questions so it's kind of like the pros the fact and the cons yeah why don't we just air condition Pine hilling I'm [Music] just Judy come to the next Sherburn school meeting the Front Row community comments [Music] Judy all right miss me guys hope you did if you didn't this to be a short part so all
017right so um I think this first quote is rather indicative of the general student attitude um I don't celebrate any of these holidays I just want days off really um so this is a terrible time in history to dishonor the Jewish people by taking away School observations and their holidays uh creting SCH calendar only does only that it does not actually remove any Christian holidays from the calendar um this could represent some backlash that could be received if um the first option could be taken um another thing which um I think does actually go to something that was in the first part is generally lean towards a floating holiday type approach where only the federal holidays or given holidays but the programming is very late on days like Good Friday um I don't know why
018this is in this slide this sounds rather on the first points but it also does show some support on this side for um having it so that even with the keeping the status quo there's still a movement to have it so that kids can still Advocate and have days have the sort of the no test schedule um it's helpful for my family um oh it's helpful for my family if these holidays are in line with our districts um I'm a teacher in holl in public schools and it can be difficult to find um child care when our holidays um end in Starks don't match um thanks for taking on this issue so some parents um what like having the more continuity between different School District calendars and the status and the status quo is decently
019in line with them so let's go to the considerations um so the first big one is um it does not increase Equity or inclusivity of additional cultures um/ religions which we have stated earlier um is a concern among students and is also one of the AIM of our committee um but other thing on the other hand this doesn't really going into adding more holidays this doesn't have doesn't really pick and choose between which holidays to add um also this whole a plurality vote with family and staff and this would also I'm guessing be more desirable to people especially the very overwhelming students who want to have more days added I'm going to infer that they'd rather have the status quo maintained than lose days so I think what this really comes down to is there
020two conflicting things coming from students on one hand they've indicated they do not want um days um these holidays taken off their calendar but they're also indicating that they want more um Equity um to be brought on onto the calendar and I think from just the um perspective of this committee um I think we should be focusing on a f aiming on um representing more equity and religious and religions and cultures but that's for you guys to decide by looking at this data I personally say if you were to go with status quo I do think that you should Implement a part of the first consideration the first um a consideration or first proposal first proposal of taking them off of having it so that kids um are more encourage to be able to go
021to their teachers and let them know that they have a holiday they're celebrating that day and for them the teachers to understand that and also schedule their calendars around that so that those days are less pressured all right um next one who's that what button is it um it's the the down button goes down the most confusing thing I've ever seen in my life yeah so these were some of the comments that we received from the second survey about adding um more holidays so I'll just read a couple of them um this one this first one is talking about um the projections seem to make it that adding the three holidays have very little impact on the length of the school year and some educationally strong schools have already included these holidays since such holidays
022uphold diversity and most likely don't majorly affect education it seems like a good idea to incorporate them um and then there's some support for taking off a couple of the holidays this is a student who wants a day off after Halloween glad um there's also a comment about how days off can be beneficial for students health um breaking up education a little bit sometimes to give people a little bit of time to relax um and catch up on work with extracurriculars and everything and um this is a comment from staff at the end of the day we can't do it all but I believe having these holidays off from school will significant significantly help create Windows and mirrors for our students especially students who may not currently feel seen um this is actually one comment
023um it's very long so um just going to read some short Snippets of it so um let see there's something powerful about inclusion and I think it's something that Doan Community could use some more of to remove all excess holidays would be to say there's too much diversity that we cannot include all of it um that is not the Dober Shan I've come to know and love um and then going on further um if we want to honestly say that people of all different walks of life are welcome in this community we need to show that by actually welcoming welcoming them into our community we don't need to strio tenants and values that we've held forever but we can alter them in order to accept we must integrate new families into our own um so
024yeah this is right and these are some considerations when thinking about adding three holidays so um some of the pros would be that additional religions and cultures are recognized with um more days off and also uh students appreciate opportunities to um rest and to complete work in those few scattered days out days off throughout the year um and then again this is um the last day of school would range from the 18th to the 23rd of June without snow days um if we did add these holidays oh and another thing that I want to mention is that from the second survey for people who chose status quo we don't have information on what their second choice would be um this is something in personal conversations that I've had people who chose status quo they had
025different opinions on what their second choice would be after that and we don't necessarily have the data on what that choice would be um and then this is some of the cons um that there are still some religions and cultures that would not be recognized um there are families who would require child child care um and would need to find that to accommodate these extra days um and then the lack of air conditioning at the Pine Hill again might be a concern and um there's a potential potential delay with the dates of senior activity graduation and these are just a la last few thoughts um so there's also support for adding in some orthodox holidays so this again some of the people who have other holidays that aren't um being considered in these proposals but
026there are other people in the district who have other religious observances um this one is talking about making room for non- judeo-christian holidays currently the of the religious holidays that we um are not mandated that we celebrate those are judeo-christian holidays so making room for some other ones also prior prioritizing days off for um fasting holidays that could be strenuous on the people we celebrate um and then the Halloween one again oh and this is me all right so um we had 20 people on the task force initially um and number of reasons we kind of dwindled over time and this represents I believe 18 of us um so as you can see if you ask the people who went on this 14-hour journey together um after looking at the data reading all the comments
027having conversations learning about other religions and cultures and rituals um 55% of them um are leaning towards having a secular calendar where we only celebrate mandated um holidays uh 28% are in favor of adding the three holidays and 16 or 177% are in favor of the status quo um their recommendation relative to Good Friday is really only change it if you're going to add threee holidays um then make it an early release day that said this is a this is a data point we we talked about this we know there's a difference between a majority and a consensus so you can see with majority opinion is consensus it says you know not everybody agrees but everybody can live with it and that was not the case of our committee there were certainly people on our
028committee who said I cannot live with a um secular calendar we can't give you an official vote tonight because we are very split um that said we're 14 hours ahead of this journey I think that this group um did a great job of modeling for our community what constructive civil discourse can look like um what learning and listening to others can look like and so I encourage you to engage in that tonight if you need more time um to to engage in that and perhaps with others moving forward um because certainly um I think this grou did a great job and appreciate all of the work that you did and all the conversations and the last pie I want to mention is what fascinating is many of us came in May with one idea of
029the calendar that we thought would be best 69% of the committee changed their n their mind between May and now because of the conversations because of the discourse so see there's power in listening and learning so we leave the next steps up to you about how much time you need to process what other data and research you might need that we can help you with or that you can collect on your own um as a side note I've talked to several superintendents um who have all of these different calendars so I'm happy to give provide you insight into what they offer in all three situations um but before we turn it over to you I just want to thank our students for coming tonight I just add to what you said in to being so
030thankful for all of your time and people who aren't here his time I think we should pause and recognize how awesome it is that our community would have this conversation it's not easy yeah not says a lot I also wanted to thank our students and also um I was on the task force and I learned a lot from all the members and I really appreciate everybody's uh volunteer work in that and I also wanted to command you for leading us through this it was you did an amazing job um um leading the whole task force making sure that we are all getting engaged in really helpful conversations with uh while being respectful thank you right well thank you I'm proud of you all I'm sure you have other things you need to do um it's
031not easy to get up in front of 18 adults um you have a lot to be proud of and a lot of bragging to do abely thank you for coming Youk you [Applause] question for you related to some of the comments on this as far as families having trouble with with child care and such one of the ones that I think as I was reading through it somebody was pointing out the Wednesday half days what's the history on why Wednesday why Wednesday because um I think that the point of early Rel days is to provide Educators with opportunities for professional development and there is a lot more brain power on a Wednesday than a Friday afternoon and we know that if we make it a Friday or a Monday attendance is going to decrease significantly
032because people will go away for long weekends and take ski weekends before my time Pine Hill used to have or the elementary used to have how many Elementary had every wi every now we at 10 so counter Blas I need does every other like every other week but it was curious did somebody put the comments um when I was reading them like why don't we have these on Fridays like where it would be less disruptive or for the family because they might have somebody more available on a Friday to to help out so a history question yeah can I ask how those are counted are those counted as full days or does two days okay yeah I have the same question to confirm that the half day counts as a day yes y but that's
033where the Hours come in you have to make sure that the total yeah the good news is 00 um we're supposed to have 900 hours at the elementary level right now we're at 955 with the half days with the half days so we're 55 hours you know more of teaching and learning at that um a secondary level we need 990 and we're at um basically 10:30 so there is room to play with the half days if we want yeah I just want to um make a suggestion um and I'm going to preface this by saying I was on the Stark times committee and many of you were on school committee then or or lived in this town and knew how difficult that process was making that decision was a lot easier for me than um
034grappling with the issues that arise when you're discussing um these issues particularly in the context of what's been going on in the world and so my suggestion is that we we take some time to do a little learning maybe have a workshop and bring in some speakers who can talk to some of these issues and and then come up with a framework for maybe discussing it in our individual committies maybe coming back together and discussing it um but but it's really a tough issue and I had had a great deal of difficulty on this committee everybody but me was really civil and nice and I had no I'm serious I'm serious I had to ask Beth to M mute me okay and then she'd unmute herself I know but but but I just think you
035know we we all come to this with certain sort of knee-jerk reactions without necessarily hearing the opposing the opposing views I think everybody everybody wants the same things you know everybody wants to get out of school the beginning of June and everybody wants Christmas Eve off and everybody wants to wants diversity equity and inclusion um how do we get there and I don't have the answer but I think as a collective group that that path for me would seem um reasonable and I've done a lot of thinking about this over the last year so that's all question what prompted this evaluation like what I wasn't around like why did we start this investigation so if we go back to the first slide um so at our September joint meeting last year um uh so like
036a year and a half ago and then at this meeting last year when we were talking about the calendars there was Community comments from um both students many of the same ones that you saw here and families requesting that we look at additional holidays um and then the whole idea you know of thinking about the equity audit and what is equity what is inclusivity is it going rolling forward and adding holidays is it rolling back so that some aren't left out Andre I have a question and I'm probably going to be the least person in the room but that won't be the first time so the thing that I was wondering because I know we have the two breaks the February and April and when I arrived here like the school that where I came
037from I came from Georgia we only have one in March so I know that everybody does the two breaks but does like alleviating any of that I know it's not a popular view but it is two two two weeks that are in there in 2011 we actually looked at that because I was on the calendar committee at the time and when staff like February and April breaks that was I mean time has changed but those breaks are needed I'll tell you being in a school distri like we're like when that ail break and it's also March is hard with the mcast so there's there's conflicting and it's also hard when we looked at our staff and where they lived it's going to be impossible unless the whole state moves that direction true you can't break
038from that I'm sorry cuz I know too like for the senior cuz my daughter when she was a senior remember the whole thing too like she was up behind but they had to like hoof it to get to the AP exam because you know people in other regions they've started school before so they're ahead of them and so they're you know they're really cramming that stuff in because our kids have started like 3 weeks later I mean there's just I know there's a lot of things but you know when you look at the totality of it all there's a whole lot that you know and I I do think we need to look at all the dates but we also need to look about the learning loss for the high schoolers cuz we're also going
039to have to kind of cram more in if we take more off so I've got to figure out where where we going to take other days from to kind of compensate for those days yeah so and that's what makes it so complicated yeah I know I have a Smo of questions my first is so we already recognize some non-secular holidays are not federal mandated holidays how did those get added to the calendar when why what was that process institutional historian Don ftor is going to take this my kids started here back in the Dark Ages we didn't have we actually we actually didn't have Good Friday we didn't have we had a real a secular calendar we didn't have Good Friday or I mean obviously Christmas because that's when the winter break started um and
040their don't know the exact history was a parent of chicker but they almost had a sick out um on a good Friday and the superintendent had to call a snow day yeah um because there wasn't enough staff and that that sort of in the the next year's calendar had the Jewish holidays and Good Friday that leads me to the my next statement so I started like grapple I mean this is not easy and it's hard to figure out it's challenging to figure out what to include what not to include everybody loses which brought me to learning about The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and I think really helps to navigate this and draw some lines for what could help us feel like we are making a more fair Equitable decision I don't know if
041everybody has read it I'm happy to read it out loud but in learning about that I personally would like to hear from our legal counsel and what their take is on it I am not a lawyer and and I don't know that any of us are in education lot but I think that is our responsibility to look into on the next step yeah I to and again that that another level of complexity because um you know Liz and I talked about this and I did a little research on it and and it's not even clear right you know and and I don't think tonight is the night to necessarily get into the nitty-gritty of it but again that's something we need to learn about and think about our values in terms of that and I
042think that's a really you know Congress shall not make any laws to establish religion for the United States well I Angie is over there smiling and she and I can go on and on about this and Martha is not here here but it's complicated but you're right it does in some sense give us some framework you know yeah I just think when I mean when you start talking about Congress for me that's like oh my God I don't really know but when I read how it applies to public schools and holidays I think it gives us some things to talk about like it sounds like was sort of part of the process before which is school couldn't open there was an undue burden if we roll it back are we setting oursel up for snow
043days if and how do we decide is that true for these other holidays I don't know if it's even true in our district currently for let's say the Jewish holidays so feel like some exploration needs to be done in terms of next steps on that path since I was on the task force I just wanted to see if if you guys want to hear my journey going through this so um when I started um volunteering for task force uh for calendar task force then I on that day last year we heard about uh in the community comment we heard students standing up asking for um their holidays specific holidays to be off um my first reaction was like why not it's great to see more holidays to include more cultures and uh religions in our
044calendar learn about it and be more inclusive so I started the task force in September we started our conversation and um at first when I started thinking about it the um logistic issues came to to my mind like Pine Hill doesn't have air conditioning even maybe two additional days it's not fair to those kids and staff um Child Care issue um all sorts of logistic issues that we can always find a solution so I kind of moved on and then um we went through the first um uh survey and I learned about all the different religions in our community how diverse our community is becoming and um all the cultures not only religions but also cultures in our community and how many different holidays there there are and then my question was like okay how
045we picking how we are prioritizing where we are drawing the line if you go to slide 32 that crazy graph I think is it one with the this religions so I mean demographic it's very um it changes all the time it's not something that um like we can look at this today and then the upcoming year might be totally different because like two families move out of the district and then five families join the district and the whole uh demog demographics will change and then if where we draw the line like the numbers are very close the it it's just very hard for me to think how we are prioritizing where we are drawing the line is it right to draw a line and then are we monitoring it and then in 3 years we
046say oh this population dropped the line should we remove the holiday and add the other holiday because that population increased so these all came to my mind and then all of these um also I was thinking um imagine a child looking at the school calendar and see many or few holidays on the calendar being observed uh in the district and their holiday is not there when that child look at that calendar the whole uh process of di that we are trying to implement will will be questioned in her in their mind but so that's what came to my mind and I don't know the right answer and I know that um going to federal holidays it's not federal holidays are not secular so it still would not be completely um Equitable right so that's reality
047and then the most Equitable option would be um um I mean the closest as we can get to being Equitable is federal holiday but I absolutely understand um the um um other issues with keeping the going back to the federal hit and goie that's those are excellent points and it really points out the horrible complexity of the issue I remember talking to Beth and Beth saying well I could convince myself of any of these and frankly as a lawyer I could argue any of them um I there's one thing though that I do want to point out as a data point and and I'm and I'm trying not to make any arguments here because I think we should be exploring next steps instead of arguing what we want but I I I hearken back to
048the equity audit which said 70% of our um you know of the constituents and that was a statistically well done you know want us to move forward boldly with Equity um diversity and inclusion but but gold exactly what you just said what is inclusion um and we're all informed with it with our own life experiences and when I grew up it was really difficult taking off rashash sh and yum Kipper and being you know one of like three kids in the school who did that and you know I I I just I think Dennis I'm sorry I don't mean to hijack things as I usually do um but maybe do we want to sort of talk about process I was going to ask if there's any more sort of new information or questions that folks
049wanted to get here and then maybe throwing out some ideas on next steps I I saw Jesse first and then I don't know if if I'm going to get you to where you want to go with that but I do want I want to make one point one kind of story um that may help with reference so I just worked on something very similarly for a state considering what languages to include for all state-based applications like anybody that's enrolling in any state based service and it came through a diversity Equity inclusion lens they're very conscious of that and we ultimately had to come down through a series of questions of what is what's our threshold for acceptance you know at what point do we want to just say this isn't going to impact the majority
050of our people so we at this point in time it doesn't makes sense to include and then after that what can we do for the additional populations who were not going to include the language what can we do to make the process easier for them so for example the vast majority of the state speaks three languages after that point there's only a very small sub section of people that speak those languages so we decided as a state not to include any additional languages it's a three majority of the languages and then to consider other sorts of support and services to help the people that do um speak other languages to get them the services and sports across the state that they needed so that was just one I guess approach that we thought because again
051you're never going to you're never going to please anyone but it created a benchmark and a metric and sort of a threshold that felt right for the state so if we can somehow create parameters around scaffolding around that as a concept that might help but so we're not swirling I have um I I mean I totally understand what you're saying but that's the Practical thing it's very different than a 13-year-old feeling left left out sure but we're always going to be there right like I we can try so I think is I saw a couple other hands is additional information