Foxborough School Committee Vote To Keep Tradition

The Foxborough School Committee voted 5-0 in last night's March 21 meeting to approve the traditional school calendar, where students will begin school after Labor Day.

Superintendent, Christopher Martes, proposed a possible change to the 2011-2012 school  calendar to the school committee back in early February. The proposed calendar draft showed students going to school for two days during the week prior to the Labor Day Holiday.

This proposed calendar draft by Martes went against Foxborough tradition, which has students returning to school the Tuesday after Labor Day.

In order to gather opinions and insight from parents, students and faculty on the proposed calendar change, Martes sent out a survey on March 1 - March 9 using K12 Insight technology. 

A total of 867 parents and 249 staff members responded to the survey.

The survey measured the percentage of parents and staff who strongly supported the change. Approximate 71% of staff indicated that they supported the change while only 53% of parents said that they mostly supported the change.

45% of parents indicated that they were concerned that the proposed change would "interfere with family plans around the Labor Day Holiday." 41% of parents also believed that the change would shorten summer vacation.

Staff members also had a number of concerns with the proposal including "not having enough benefit to warrant the change," not enough time to prepare classrooms if students begin the same week as teachers and less time for meeting with colleagues and planning.

Parents were able to list their additional concerns in the survey that included:

• Break from tradition
• Child daycare concerns
• Conflicts with moving older children to college
• Students would get out of school too early for summer camps and activities.
• Homework over Labor Day weekend.

After reviewing the information complied in the survey, Martes came to the conclusion that there was "not a compelling reason that should change tradition."

"If it is not broke, then why fix it," said Martes.

Martes also joked that "he did not want a school calendar change to be his legacy in Foxborough."

The school committee was impressed with how many parents participated in the survey, and hope that the survey technology will be used again in the future to aid in other education concerns.