School Board Preserves Traditional Calendar

February vacation will be preserved for another year thanks to the new school calendar adopted by the Board of Education on Monday with a 7-2 vote.

After much deliberation, the Board decided to use a traditional format for the 2012-13 calendar instead of switching to the district calendar.  The issue had been debated for the last couple of months, but an outpour of public support in favor of the current calendar schedule outweighed the potential cost savings of switching, according to Board member Bev Darvin Cwerner.

"The overwhelming commentary from the public in letter and verbal format is 'we want the traditional calendar,'" Darvin Cwerner said. "Based on the overwhelming public comment, we went back and reworked the calendar to a more traditional format with the February and April weeklong breaks."

The new calendar is slightly different than in recent years, but it still preserves the main elements of the traditional schedule.

February vacation will once again be an entire week, from Feb. 18, 2013 - Feb. 22, 2013. Schools will also be out for another week in April, from April 22, 2013 - April 26, 2013.

The new calendar also has three religious holidays, which is up from two in recent years. Schools will be closed on Sept. 17, 2012 for Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 26, 2012 for Yom Kippur and March 29, 2013 for Good Friday.

Schools will also be closed for the first time on Martin Luther King Day in January. The Board said that the popular "Educate to Celebrate" program to honor the life of Dr. King could be continued on a different day.

"I think there is inherent value in educating our students about Dr. King, however, I think we can do that on a day when school is in session. It doesn't have to be on a national holiday," Davin Cwerner said.

Resident opinion was split in the public response portion of the meeting, with two opinions voiced, one in favor of having the holiday off and another in favor of keeping the school day to use to educate students.

The school year ends a few days later than the calendar does currently, with the last day for students falling on June 26 compared to June 24 in 2009-10 and June 22 in 2010-11 and 2011-12.

The reason the Board considered switching to the district calendar, which has an extended weekend off in February as opposed to a full week break among other differences, was for potential costs savings. Bernards schools have higher faculty absentee rates when other schools in the district are off, which means they have to spend more for substitutes. Other potential savings could have come from decreased transportation costs and the ability to share district-wide teacher training costs.

After review, the Board concluded that they could only quantify about $2,500 in savings, which was deemed to be insignificant in relation to the strong public support of the current calendar. Board member Lou Carlucci believed that there could have been much more substantial savings, but difficulties in quantifying the amount led the Board to go with the traditional calendar.