During the Jan. 31 Board of Education (BOE) meeting, members discussed various options for remaking the 2010-11 calendar in light of recent snow days and possible cancellations in the near future.  One option that received a significant amount of discussion was the elimination of April’s recess.

“I personally think we have to go into the April recess first,” Superintendent of Schools Elliott Landon said.  “I do not see the value in adding days beyond June 22 for any of our kids.”

As of Monday, Jan. 31, the Westport Public Schools have seen four cancellations due to snow; since the calendar accounts for only three school closings, the school already needs to make up an additional day.

Four days could be removed from the April break and converted into normal school days; the Friday of April break is Good Friday and a national holiday.  Landon believes that cutting into this break is the best way to resolve the calendar conflict.

BOE member Michael McGovern agreed with Landon, saying that the school needed some “certainty.”

“I’m extremely concerned that we’ve lost so much instruction time,” McGovern said.  “We need to take four days off of April break.”

McGovern reasoned that if some of April break is retained — if it is reduced rather than altogether canceled — the school will lack security and certainty with regards to making sure the initial number of 182 school days is maintained.

BOE Mark Mathias had another reason for wanting to ensure that all of April break was canceled — the propensity of students to take school off regardless.

“If we only take a couple days off that week, we would have such sparse attendance that the amount of makeup work would be overwhelming,”  Mathias said.

Though BOE Chairman Don O’Day initially wanted to open up the possibility of canceling February break, McGovern pointed out that the threat of snow days meant school might not be in session during late February anyway.  This point of view was shared by Landon.  By the end of the meeting, the Board had decided to table any further discussion until their Feb. 7 meeting, but had essentially decided to not cut into their February break.

There was some discussion of moving a February 28 staff development day to the Monday following Good Friday, giving students a four-day weekend; McGovern, who proposed this idea, called it an “Easter Monday.”  This will be discussed at the Feb. 7 meeting.

Keep checking InklingsNews.com for further coverage of the snow day situation and how it will affect this year’s calendar.