All right.

This meeting will be conducted remotely over Zoom.

Attendance by board and commission members will be remote.

Remote attendance shall count towards a quorum.

The meeting will be broadcast live and recorded by Sharon TV. If you elect to enable your webcam, your image and background may be broadcast with or without sound. First up on our agenda, as always, is public comments as part of our community updates.

I do just want to throw it out there as a recommendation or a request.

I certainly can't control or tell people what they can use public comments for.

I do just want people to note that there is a public comment period after we begin to discuss the calendar.

That's intentional.

We do want to hear feedback from the public regarding the calendar.

There's some substantive change that's being discussed around the calendar.

And so there's an opportunity for the public to speak.

I just want folks to be aware that for public comment, I just don't want it to become repetitive and get used in sort of two places.

All right.

That being said, is there anybody who wants to keep time or should I keep it?

All right, Judy.

Two minutes per speaker, please.

Try to keep with it or just keep to that time limit.

Other than that, do as you please.

First up, I see Judy Crosby. I'm hitting ask to unmute.

I don't know why it's not being cooperative.

Not sure what's going on here. I'm hitting ask to unmute. I'm hitting ask to unmute. I'm hitting ask to unmute. I'm hitting ask to unmute.

Do you want me to try to hit it, Avi? Yeah, can you try? I've tried three times.

If you could try again.

If you could try.

No.

Not working?

No.

All right, let me go to Mira Belinki. We'll come back to Judy Crosby.

I'm hitting ask to unmute.

Oh, there we go.

We can't hear you. It shows as...

How about now? Now we can.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

So I'm here to talk about the curriculum.

I requested the sex ed curriculum from middle school.

Parents have actually been having trouble getting it. I brought this up at the previous school committee meeting.

I have not got a complete curriculum yet.

And it's a little bit troubling because already in the little bit that I've seen, there's a lot of content which really ought to be re-evaluated.

And it would be good to have more than a set of eyes on it. So just an example. So this is from one of the slides.

And it basically takes the gender identity view that sex is separate from gender.

And yet, strangely enough, it talks about boys having nocturnal emissions, which it defines as ejaculation of semen.

And then goes on in the next line to say that this could happen to either sex.

So is sex or gender the same thing or not?

I think it's something that the school should decide and try to be consistent on.

And another thing, same slide show.

So kids are watching a video where it advocates for teen boys to have unrestricted access to the girls' locker room because if that's what makes them feel authentic, then go for it, boys.

Now, I know Massachusetts law does allow this, but should the school be advocating for this as good policy?

And should this be brought up as something as fact or as something that students could debate?

Because the way it's done in the class now, this is a fact. Boys should go into the girls' locker room.

Now, eighth grade curriculum.

It talks about responsible decision-making.

So eighth grade is for 13 and 14-year-old.

And here's the slide.

Responsible decision-making is that 13 and 14-year-olds should practice safer sex.

I'd like to remind you that the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16.

And if we have 13 and 14-year-olds practicing any kind of sex... Sorry, Ms. Blinky.

It's two minutes, so just finish your sentence.

All right. Last thing.

Another slide saying that you should be practicing safer sex with multiple partners.

That's under prevention.

At 13.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. Judy Krause, we're going to try this again.

Thank you. It also wasn't letting me turn my camera on. I was on my iPad. So I don't know what that was about.

But I wanted to ask for a follow-up.

And I don't know if maybe add an agenda item to an upcoming meeting.

At the end of fiscal year 23, there was $1,219,000, just about, sitting in the cafeteria revolving account.

There was clear discussion in October about improvements that were going to be made in food service and a spend-down plan.

What was said at a joint meeting when you presented to FinCom that, oh, everybody had that issue. The audit clearly concluded everyone did not have that issue and that most schools are spending about 85% of their budget on, like, food and service.

And Sharon was spending, like, 40%. So clear corrective action was needed.

There was substantial discussion in October.

I think now that we're heading into February, it's worth monitoring so you don't wind up in the same situation at the end of the year. And I'm raising it now because fees are on the budget discussion for tonight.

And you do charge some lunch fees for staff and also for kids buying snacks and things.

So I do think it's relevant.

But I would love, as a community member, to have an update and ensure we're spending that money down and getting the kids the right things.

Thanks.

All right.

Seeing no further hands, I would throw it to our Secretary for Correspondence.

My understanding is we don't have correspondence tonight.

Do we have a student rep here?

If so, please raise your hand.

I don't believe that we have a student rep present.

And so, Dr. Patel, I believe you don't have general updates tonight, correct?

No, I'm going to hold those for the next meeting.

Absolutely. All right.

So then we will move to discussion items.

The first discussion item being our school year 2024-2025 calendar discussion and options.

I will throw that over to our calendar subcommittee chair, Julie Rowe.

Thank you, Avi.

And Shane, are you able?

Are you there?

Yes. Are you able? Okay, great. Thank you. Thank you very much.

So I just want to frame this to get started to the community.

I'm very excited. A lot of people seem like they're very interested in the topic.

So we would like to discuss this in public.

We've met to talk about it in terms of like negotiation with the STA, but we really felt that it was important to be very transparent.

So we have not made any decisions or otherwise settled anything.

So this is not a settled issue.

And so that is why we are welcoming community comment.

If you don't get a chance to talk tonight, we would love to see your letter.

Prefer to see a letter rather than on Facebook, but I'll be watching Facebook too.

So overall, the calendar subcommittee was commissioned last year because we received a petition asking to add a cultural holiday, cultural slash religious holiday to the calendar.

And we felt at the time it was really important for us to evaluate this sort of as a whole and not just kind of do one thing at a time. So we established the calendar subcommittee.

So we wanted to understand our community's preferences as well as balance the diversity of Sharon with the fact that we are trying to maintain continuity, optimize learning time, and so forth.

So to date, there has been a survey that was sent to the school community.

There were 858 unique responses, which I think is a phenomenal number and showed a lot of interest in this. In addition, I also analyzed the absence data.

Thank you, Jane, for getting that for the past year because I wanted to see if there were any patterns in absences.

As I said, we had an executive session to discuss strategy for negotiating with the STA regarding this issue.

And now it is a member of now it's on the agenda.

So we're going to share some of the key results. We're going to provide some options that we came up with.

And again, nothing is subtle.

This will be an opportunity for the school committee to share their opinions in public on different options being considered.

And most importantly, we would like to hear your feedback to inform our next steps as we move to several options that we will then propose to the STA for final approval.

So the survey.

We found by a two to one margin that the respondents wanted to add more holidays to the current calendar, despite the impact it may have on the last day of school date in June. So they said they would rather have a longer school year with more holidays than a shorter school year with fewer holidays.

So that was pretty clear.

We also I also looked at the absence data and to see if there was any pattern about like, is there a particular day where there's a lot of absences for a particular holiday? And as you might imagine, the days of the highest absenteeism occur occur before one of the vacation weeks or a three day weekend.

From what we could ascertain, there did not seem to be particularly low attendance on the holidays. So if you look at the graph that I'm showing.

Oops, can we go back?

Thanks.

Sorry.

Okay. So the chart that's here, this is the people who this is this is the holidays that people found to be most important.

So in the first box, you can see the highest amount of people were interested in having Yom Kippur and the first day of Rosh Hashanah off.

Then sort of in the next bucket, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, as well as Diwali and Good Friday. So there was support like about half, roughly, or a little less, a little more than half support for that compared to Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

There was support for Lunar New Year.

There was support for Eid.

And then there are, you know, there's other, many other holidays that our community celebrates, but not sort of a critical mass. So we picked this apart and we generally overall feel it's appropriate to recognize cultural religious holidays of importance to large groups in our town.

I think people need to understand that Sharon's tradition of giving Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah days one and two off is because those were, because the rules had been, if you expect low attendance on a particular day, then that day would not count for school.

So we, so I guess it was decided many decades ago that these were appropriate days to take off.

Now it is a little more loose.

My understanding of the law is a little looser.

So you can sort of acknowledge important cultural holidays.

So as a result of this feeling, two thirds of the survey respondents said they preferred more holidays.

So one option to consider is to recognize Diwali, Lunar, New Year, and Eid al-Fatera.

And I apologize if I'm mispronouncing anything.

With a day off from school.

Um, we also saw that the first support for the first day of Rosh Hashanah is strong and the support for the second day is somewhat less strong.

So, um, at least for the next school year, it might be a good idea because it falls Rosh Hashanah is on a Thursday. The second day is on a Friday.

That might be, um, a good day to take off, but we're open.

Um, and the proposed holidays caused the school year to extend well into late June.

Um, and so these, I think everybody understands that the farther we go into June, the less optimal it is for learning.

So, um, we're, if we want to think about days that we could sort of add back, one option could be changing the day before Thanksgiving to an early release day, which means that no longer would be a full day. It would be a half day. Um, as you might imagine, this is very, um, dependent on a given year's, uh, holiday, like where they fall during the week. So, uh, currently Yom Kippur does not impact any school days, but another year it might.

Um, and again, some of the holidays we were considering adding this year may not, may, may fall on a weekend next year. Um, and another, you know, some may say, what about December 23rd?

Um, this year we have, uh, Christmas is on a Wednesday.

So, uh, the 23rd, having a half day on the 23rd, um, does not seem like a good idea.

Um, I think many people feel that that would not really be a productive day of school.

So when we might think about having a half day on, um, the 23rd or another day, it is, uh, in other words, what I'm saying is the 23rd, having the 23rd off this year is a function of the calendar, but in other years, the 23rd might not be off.

And then that would also contribute to fewer days in June. Finally, um, as we said, it's, it's important to end as early as possible in June.

Um, and we have some other constraints.

So school should not start earlier than the week before Labor Day. This is, um, you know, the, uh, this decision we've reached with the, uh, Sharon teachers.

Um, and I said about the 23rd and we can't change school vacation weeks because those are aligned with other towns.

Um, and we shouldn't alter them because I think it would wreak a lot of havoc on teacher schedules and we cannot change federal holidays.

So one day that we could consider, um, also doing a half day would be an early release on good Friday.

So if we added three days onto the calendar for 24, 25, um, the, the earliest it would end would be Wednesday, June 18th.

And if we had all five snow days, it would be June 23rd.

Did I have that?

Do I have that right? That's if we don't take. No, no, no, no, no. It's not to do with the snow days. The range is June 18th through Monday, June 23rd.

It depends on whether or not you take all those other half days.

Oh, okay.

That's right. Because so, so just to finish.

So you have to, the snow days would be a five additional days to those dates.

Right?

So it could, the last day of school could be June 23rd.

But if that year we have five school days, that would extend like into the next week. Is that correct?

That's correct.

I think that would almost go to the 30th of June, actually.

Yeah, it would, it would go pretty far. Cause I think the weekend that would cross the weekend. So it would definitely be pretty far if not June 30th.

Um, I think that is the end of the presentation.

Um, uh, is that, is that right?

That's the end of the presentation, right? Okay.

So, um, I will give it back to Avi.

Would you like to moderate the discussion?

Uh, that is, yes, I will.

Um, thank you.

Great presentation, Julie. I appreciate you, um, explaining all that.

Um, all right.

Is there any conversation at the table?

Anybody have any views they'd like to share?

I see Wem's hand first.

Hmm.

Uh, I have lots of views, but I have, um, initially I have kind of a question for administration.

When we talk about days that are sort of unproductive, right? Like pushing later into June. Um, what exactly are the reasons for that? Right. Is it just sort of assumed that the last week of June, everyone's headed looking towards summer vacation? Is it, are there logistical issues?

Is it sort of, is it like the heat in the buildings?

I mean, I don't think there's like an arbitrary June date where all of our brains just like disappear, right?

I think that if we were to push the school year later, I'm not advocating that we do, but if we were to do that, then, then can I assume that the week that the week that our brains are like not concentrated on education?

Does that also get pushed back a week?

You know what I'm saying? Or even like half days.

If we say that half days are not very effective for education, is that, I mean, by virtue of what, right? If we're cramming the half day, turning a half day into like eight, 20 minute periods, I could see that being maybe less productive.

If we're just taking a half day where we're only doing, say, four classes that day, and there's still full periods, I don't see a reason why half days shouldn't be productive.

So I guess the question is, when we talk about the efficacy of certain school days, what are we talking about, really?

I think when we're talking about the end of the year, I think it's a combination of, you know, it's partly the weather and the opportunities for heat during that time.

It's also, I think it's our kind of currently our internal clocks, you know, our seasonal clocks are as we get further and further into June with the heat. You know, and as we're, you know, getting a longer, longer school year, then we're accustomed, those days tend to be less productive.

I mean, that's what we're, you know, we'd obviously be doing everything we can to try to adjust those clocks.

But that's the reality of what we see in those last, as far as half days.

Yeah, some half days can be very productive.

I think half days that fall, you know, before a long weekend or before a break, with the combination of higher absenteeism on those days.

And, you know, kind of anticipation for those times, those tend to be less productive.

I think weather is something we can't control, but I think internal clocks can be tweaked, right?

I mean, that's a matter of practice. Yes, and I don't think it's that.

I think it's a pretty, it would take some time to really make that shift.

I don't think we're the only district that experiences that. And it's a pretty strong kind of, it's a school cultural thing that goes beyond sharing, but we would certainly do our best.

Sure.

SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: Okay. When you said you had a lot of thoughts, I didn't, I don't want to cut you off at that one.

Feel free.

No, it's okay. I'll wait. I want to hear what other people have to say too.

Okay.

Shauna.

Thank you. So I was the, one of the people who moved last year, unknowing kind of policy procedure as to how to add Diwali.

And then it ended up being a moot point for this year because Diwali happened to fall on a, on the weekend.

But nonetheless, I'm glad that we've created the subcommittee that Julie and Wen really dove in and looked at all of the data.

Julie, thank you.

Much appreciated.

Um, I do want to note that I found it kind of interesting and something I didn't consider, um, until last time, Avi, when you had said that the calendar and like, I kind of digested it was that the calendar is voted every year.

So just because we're doing it right now and looking at this, that, um, whoever's at the table kind of in May of this year in terms of like newly elected school committee and the board next year will, um, vote on that. So I think that was an important, um, fact that I didn't really think about, um, in terms of holidays, I would like to see us move towards, um, adding half days to compensate.

And say for, um, some of the new additions so that it would almost cancel each other out.

So if we were to add a half day, um, for, uh, Thanksgiving, then we could add a half day, say, uh, we could add Diwali as like an even exchange and looking to see where we can do that in our current schedule more so that our proposed schedule is more representative of the community.

Um, I also would be in favor of, um, taking away the second day of Rosh Hashanah.

Um, and I know, um, I've spoken to several members of the community and I think we've had some great dialogue amongst ourselves, differing dialogue, which is great. Um, but, um, that is something that I think I would be in support of and, and people, um, that I've spoken to in the community would be, uh, supporting, supportive of, um, in exchange for other, um, kind of cultural represent, cultural and religious representations.

Um, so that's kind of where I have, where I sit right now, um, and kind of similar to when I want to see where the conversation goes and, and add some more thought to it later.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Adam. Adam.

Thank you, Avi. So, um, I, I'm also kind of appreciative of the, uh, need and desire to kind of represent additional cultures within the calendar.

Um, and I know in, in some of our conversations around the table, um, I tried to, to kind of gauge the difference that we saw in the, um, in the survey information between kind of differences in the first and second day. Um, and I, I, I, I, I, I, I had a lot of concern expressed about removing the second day. Um, I had the opportunity to talk to a lot of people and, and I actually shot, I got slightly different feedback.

I, I had a lot of concern expressed about removing the second day.

Um, I think outside of, um, kind of the, you know, maybe less observant communities, um, for those who don't know, kind of differences in observance across different, um, kind of areas of Judaism.

Um, but, um, you know, that, that within Sharon, we actually do have a fairly observant community.

Um, and that's true both, uh, on the reform side where many reform synagogues don't hold services, um, but Sharon's does.

Um, it's one of the, the few that does, um, the conservative synagogue, um, I spoke to, and they actually have good numbers because they track attendance.

Um, you know, and they see only a very small, um, decrease in attendance between first and second day.

Um, and I think I also undercounted in, in my assessment, um, people who are unaffiliated, but attend services at Chabad, either, um, Chabad of Sharon or Canton.

Um, and having reached out to those communities also found actually a large number of, of people who would be affected, who would have otherwise maybe not been counted, um, as we assess kind of practices within the community.

So I think there would actually be a, a, quite a large number of people, um, who are, are either absent or otherwise impacted by removal of the second day. So, um, I support, um, adding days, um, and finding areas to, uh, trade where possible.

Um, but also maintaining both days of Roshana.

Thank you, Adam. Julie. Thank you, Avi.

I just wanted to, um, just three things that I wanted to say very quickly.

Um, the first is I would actually be interested in hearing from the community about Good Friday.

Um, because, um, I know that, you know, Catholics go to church on Good Friday afternoon.

I don't know, um, if this is something a lot of people are concerned about or like to do, but, um, um, to me, I, I felt that worship practices have changed in my humble knowledge, but, um, I'd still be interested to hear, um, if that, if I'm wrong.

Um, the second is that I want the community to also know we did, um, consider a federal holiday schedule.

And, um, we, if there was a lot of support for a federal holiday schedule, we would end something like June 12th, I think it was calculated.

Um, however, we would still have to address the fact that there would be several days of school with significant absences and those days might not count.

So, which is the original reason, like I said, at the beginning of the presentation.

Um, finally, I just wanted to, um, you know, make a note that, um, if, when the final, uh, document is posted, there's a, a table with what other districts do. Um, Easton follows only the federal holiday schedule.

Sharon is the only school that has day two of Rosh Hashanah.

Hopkinton gives a day for Diwali Lunar New Year and Eid al-Fitr.

Again, I'm sorry if I said that wrong, depending on the year.

Um, Brookline does a, like, it has like these categories.

And so it's like, this holiday is, is off. This holiday is, um, important, but we're not giving it off, but there shouldn't be tests. And they have different like categories like that. Um, and most school districts actually do have early release instead of a full day off, um, the day before Thanksgiving.

Um, so I was just wanted to add that information to the discussion.

Thanks, Julie.

Veronica.

Thanks, Avi. I want to thank Julie and Wen and the calendar committee for doing all this work because it was pretty intensive. And, um, I think that for me, I understand that our role as school committee members is to really look hard at what we know to be the possibility that we will have a high, a level of absences amongst students and our, um, staff people.

Right. And so the productive days of school are those dates that we know will have people coming to school.

Um, so rather than calling things out as, you know, dependent on what we understand to be important dates for folks, I think that we know that there are lots of members of our community of different cultural, um, and religious, uh, groups that would be observe observant.

But I wonder if a good question for the community is if we held school on those days, would you go, would you send your child to school? Would you work? Because I think, I feel like my role as a school committee member is really to understand that.

Right. So that's my first, that's a subtle difference, uh, in whether you observe a thing or whether you would send your child to school on that day, if school were held. So to Julie's, uh, former point just now, if you are an observant person for Good Friday, is that something that can happen after school and your child could go to school on that day because your observance is later in the day. So it's really not so much about, do you observe it, but would school impact, having school that day impact you? Um, I just want to say from the historic perspective on the, on the end of the year, what I understood from years of asking these questions, and, and I should present the caveat that I'm in favor of adding holidays that we have historically not had in the calendar because over the course of the 12 years I've been on and off the committee, there have been a lot of groups that have petitioned school committee to add days. And we haven't had, I don't think a critical mass of folks up until this moment that have really made those questions, ones that we want to now say, Hey, we're at a point, I think inflection point in our community where these things are in, uh, enough members of our community are desirous of this change.

So we, I've heard over the years, a lot of, uh, requests that have kind of gone on, uh, unanswered to an extent.

So I'm excited that we're at this point of, of opening this conversation, but I'm really mindful of this idea that in June, what we're not doing right in those June dates, from what I understand from administration is adding new content.

So it's not so much that it isn't a productive day from the standpoint of our kids enjoying a social interaction or a step up day or something that is a community building.

All of those things are valuable things that happen at school and they can be productive and beautiful days, but we're not going to be investing ourselves in new content for kids in those June dates, particularly.

Right. So that's why the value of say June, you know, 20th is not maybe as valuable as April 20th.

Right. So it's really a question of, um, what is happening on the day, as opposed to whether or not your head's in the game for what is going to be planned for that day. Right. So field day is going to be fun on June 20th, but you're not holding field day on April 20th. Right. Um, so I understand that as a school committee member, again, I really want to try to capitalize on the dates between labor day and Memorial day. So that's why I'm curious from the standpoint of our community and getting feedback from, from our community about really studying your family practice to determine on the dates that you would otherwise consider to be your dates of observation.

If school were held, would you send your child to school?

Right. That's a subtle question, but that's really where I land because I don't want to make a decision that feels like we're not going to have a productive school day, obviously, and, and trample on people's, um, uh, family practice and traditions.

Obviously we have to be mindful of all those things, but that's where it comes down for me.

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Um, when do you want to go and then I'll go or do you want to? Sure. Yeah. I just have a couple of things that they're kind of random.

Um, I had a member of the community ask about, so in the presentation, I don't, I don't know if people had time to look at it, but, you know, Julie had put together all of these dates, um, against other districts. I had someone ask specifically about native, uh, public schools and act in Boxborough.

Uh, they kind of follow the same trend. They have one day for Rosh Hashanah.

Uh, they aren't school, they, uh, have a day off for good Friday.

They have half a day before Thanksgiving.

So there are sort of these trends across all other districts, both regionally, um, you know, sort of in our periphery and also ones that may have similar makeups where that is considered, we are kind of the outlier. Um, and then as I'm looking at the absence data, uh, Julie's right.

Again, the, the big spikes are the ones that are before, you know, major holidays.

Otherwise, regardless of the holiday being celebrated or whatever is happening that day, the average is actually quite consistent across the board.

So I think, you know, when we talk about, you know, which days are high days of absence, none of these days are days of high absence.

You know, for this district across the board, it's really only the ones before like Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Um, so I think that's something to note as well. And I, lastly, I think, you know, Veronica was talking about sort of the question of, would you send your kid to school?

I think that's something that we didn't capture in the survey.

That's, you know, my mea culpa.

The survey was imperfect.

The data we have is imperfect, you know, but I think that question is also tricky because you may be asking certain cultures that don't have, um, that have a different way, have a different relationship with choices, uh, when it comes to education versus something else. Cultures that are immigrant cultures that are acclimating to society.

Um, the way that they will approach that problem and hear that question is perhaps different.

So that's just, so I think that question itself is also tricky.

And I'm done.

SPEAKER_UNKNOWN: All right. Um, Julie, is it cool if I go and then take you or?

Okay. Um, so when I think her answer there at the end was something that I'd wanted to touch on with that. I think we have to separate, not just we, this table, but I think the community has to separate two different things that we're, we're trying to do with the calendar, both of which I think are really important.

One is practicality.

Um, so for example, I would prefer the day before Thanksgiving be an off day. Every year I drive to Buffalo with my family.

For me, that's an important day off, but my wife teaches in a district where that's a half day and so we've had to, we've had to sort of work around that.

And to me, I wouldn't personally, um, dig in.

Um, and I would hope that members of our community would understand if that's, if that's a learning loss day, that's going to be in June. That's a day I think that we can, we can agree to put as a half day and understand that there's a benefit educationally at the end of the year.

And then separately from the practicality, we're also trying to look at our calendar and is it representative of our community and is it most importantly, and I think this is something this group at this table does very well. And I'm proud to be a part of you all for this is it's not necessarily a representative in the sense of numbers, um, and you know, response data, but more importantly is every kid in our district, every family in our district feeling like they're welcomed here because of our, uh, districts acceptance and celebration of who they are and how they came to be here and why they belong here. And so for me, I agree with when that the question of whether or not people wouldn't come to school isn't particularly relevant.

I think different people make those choices for different reasons.

Um, I do think that adding these holidays is important.

I think, you know, in particular, the three holidays that were highlighted in the presentation, Julie put, um, I think Diwali, we've certainly heard a lot over the last few years from our community that, that there's a feeling that not recognizing Diwali with an off day is, uh, feeling hurtful to members of our community.

I think Lunar New Year, I think Eid, I think these are communities, uh, within our community and part of our community and part of the fabric of our community that, that have expressed a need to be recognized.

For me, I do want to say that I think that removing the second day of Rosh Hashanah, which I don't think should be off the table. I think it's worthy of discussion.

Personally, for me, I struggle with representation and the idea of recognizing others at the, at the, to the detriment of members of our community.

So for me, I'm in favor of adding and not subtracting.

Um, I would be remiss if I didn't, and this is why I think like the rest of you, I want to have this conversation with our community because I think I would be remiss if I didn't transparently share that I spoke with a rabbi who I respect tremendously, who's much more observant than I am. And he did share with me that he thinks that there is a difference between removing a date, a Jewish holiday, because of a shift in demographic versus the Jewish community saying, Hey, look, there's three holidays we recognize historically here.

And if it's, if it benefits another community, I think the second day of Rosh Hashanah is up for grabs. Um, you know, he told me he thinks that being part of a community means doing things like that. And so I respected his view quite a bit on that. And I did want to share that, that he had said that to me.

Um, in closing, I would just say that I, it feels to me like when I hear things like there's no other district that takes the second day of Rosh Hashanah off to me, that's, that's something that I value about this community as a Jewish person that grew up here. Um, yeah, that's something unique about Sharon.

And so that's why Sharon has always felt uniquely welcoming, uh, to the Jewish community.

And for the same reason, I want Sharon to be uniquely welcoming to other communities.

And so I think we should recognize other people's holidays as well. I just would ask that we don't do it to the detriment of a community who's always felt welcome here.

Julie, did you still want to speak?

Nope.

Um, are there any members of administration who'd like to chime in before I go to the public?

No, I think, I think I'm, I'm very interested in what the public has to say. So I'm going to hold.

It's a great political answer.

No, I'm just kidding. That's a great answer in general. I love it. All right. I see Judy Crosby.

Oh, Judy, your hand is kind of raised and then come down. I'm going to hope that the glitch are okay. I'm going to ask to unmute and hope it works. Is there a time limit?

Time limit?

Yeah. Let's same rules apply.

Let's try to keep it to two minutes.

All right.

Judy Crosby. I saw you first, even though I think in my order now, you're not first, but you are. So let's. Thanks.

So, Mike, I have a few comments.

One, I would really have liked, and maybe we will still hear from our new director of diversity, equity, and inclusion on this discussion.

This feels like kind of an obvious place where Ms. Trevede should have been included from the outset of her time with the district.

And I'm hoping that that has happened.

Or if not, it is going to happen before decisions are made.

Secondly, I wanted to make folks aware, as you're talking about, well, if we give this day and then we can just add a half day before Thanksgiving.

Please remember our high school students who take high stakes AP testing.

Those tests are all administered on the same date nationwide in May.

So to answer some of the questions of, well, why are days in June less valuable?

Any day that kids in any of those advanced classes, which this town values incredibly highly miss between the start of school and the administration of that test puts them at a disadvantage compared to their peers in other areas of the country.

Let's remember the Midwest, the South, and the West all start much earlier than us.

Generally sometime between the end of July and a couple weeks before we start.

So, and they don't observe all of these holidays.

So those kids are getting a lot more instruction.

Our teachers are awesome and they try and fit in all of the content, but it is a race.

And the more days that we insert, and this is, you know, and I support the idea of recognizing all cultures, but the more days we insert and then we go, well, we'll just do a half day on this day to make it up.

You need to remember those half days are not nearly as productive.

It's less time in class.

And so there are impacts on specific kids and specifically those high achieving AP classes that y'all care so deeply about and spend so much energy on. Thank you, Ms. Crosby. Your time's up. Hi, I'm Wendy MacArthur.

I'm a parent to a middle schooler in a high school, and I also work in the Hopkinton School District. Talking about adding a half day here before vacation week really speaks to me both as an educator and a parent.

You are requiring teachers to come in for a half day that they're expecting to have off.

I believe by the rules, they are not allowed to take those days off. So you're adding less of a holiday for them.

The half days that you're adding before breaks, no learning is being done.

Those are days that kids watch Charlie Brown Christmas or Charlie Brown Halloween or, you know, all of those fun things. Those are the days that people do anything. So no learning is done on those half days. We are one of the later school districts that actually open.

And so I'm curious why the thought hasn't been to start school a week earlier, because I think the inclusion of these holidays are an extremely important thing for our district, seeing that we are so diverse and we want to make everybody feel heard.

But adding half days, I do not think is the way to go here. I would like to suggest maybe you look at starting the school year a week earlier.

Thank you.

Yes, my name is Jeff Mahoney.

I'm actually a school assistant over at Heights Elementary and just wanted to put my two cents in regarding being outside and inside at the school.

Regarding recess, we go by state law for temperatures.

So if it's a certain temperature, it's too cold to go outside, then we're inside.

We have lots of heat in the school.

Lots of rooms are really hot and a lot of rooms are cool, which is fine during the wintertime.

But my concern is if we go past the days where it's too hot, where we, in hindsight, couldn't be outside.

And if the building is too hot inside and let's just say not a snow day, but a heat day, what if a day is canceled because it is just too hot to go to school?

Is that day at the end of the year?

Is that going to be another day that needs to be added?

So that was, I see you shaking your head, Julie, but it just, that's something I just want to make, you know, aware as, you know, school assistants that we deal with recess and lunches, is it going to be too hot in the cafeteria and outside for the kids to enjoy that time?

So that's just a comment I have.

Thank you. Thank you.

I was muted.

I appreciate you lending that perspective.

All right. Next up, Dan Newman.

Hi, I have a specific point and then I have a general point.

My specific point is I heard some extrapolation during the discussion about other districts to Sharon.

I hope that during the decision making, you'll consider that the demographics of Sharon are different from other districts and how those demographics differ. So something like the second day of Rosh Hashanah, you can look at other districts and say, well, they have, they don't have, they do have school during those days and it doesn't seem to have a lot of absences.

But Sharon has one of the highest Jewish populations, just for example.

So please just be wary of those kinds of considerations where making extrapolations from district to district.

By the way, totally supportive of adding more days rather than subtracting and recognizing days that have significance to other cultures.

The general point is I heard kind of a mishmash of all different kinds of considerations during the discussion.

I hope when the committee approaches this, we can think in terms of principles.

Maybe you could share with the community what specific principles you are thinking about and apply some rules rather than just treating everything as a one-off.