Adopted 2020-21 Hewlett-Woodmere School District calendar not a community favorite

Beginning the 2021-2021 school year before Labor Day and having a two-week holiday break for Christmas and New Year’s garnered mixed reaction from a portion of the Hewlett-Woodmere School District community, when the proposed school calendar was unveiled earlier in January.

Between summer vacation ending earlier than usual and needing to be home with younger children for nearly 10 working days were viewed as hardships by some of the parents. Despite the opposition, the district’s Board of Education approved the calendar at the Jan. 23 meeting in the Hewlett High School library by a 6 to 1 vote. Trustee Paul Critti was the lone dissenter.

“For families who have both parents working, having your child locked up in the house for two weeks can cause a problem,” Critti said. “Having two weeks off for Christmas is a nice idea, but not everybody is able to take off from work during that time.”

The first day of school will be Thursday Sep. 3, four days before Labor Day. The winter break will stretch from Monday Dec. 21 to Monday Jan. 4. In comparison, the 2019-2020 school calendar had the first day of school on Sept. 3, one day after Labor Day, and winter break was from Dec. 23 to Jan. 5.

Trustee Cheryl May said she was a proponent of the new calendar. She noted that in her nine years on the board, she has never received more positive feedback on any other issue then she did for this year’s two-week winter break. 

“Our middle school and high school kids are under a tremendous amount of stress,” May said. “I’ve never gotten more thank yous from people in public on any other district issue. The parents said the break allowed their kids to rest and decompress from all the school work.”

She also believes that the earlier start to the new school year could be educationally beneficial to the students. “Summer is a long period of time to not have your eyes on reading and writing material,” May said. “I’ve heard over and over again from people that for each day a student is away from school, their reading levels drop.”

Hewlett resident Alina Lipovetskaya-Pinkhasov said she has two children who attend Hewlett Elementary School. She noted how the calendar does a disservice to her children’s education. “For me, it doesn’t matter if I get someone to watch my children,” Lipovetskaya-Pinkhasov said. “The problem is that my daughter who’s in fifth grade got so much schoolwork dumped on her after the two-week winter break that it resulted in her having a week long migraine.” Several other residents posted their opposition and other comments on the Hewlett-Woodmere District 14 Facebook discussion group page.

Board President Mitchell Greebel understood the opposition to the calendar, but noted that he thinks the board created a calendar that is in the best interest of the community. 

“Whenever anybody has to make a decision that impacts more than one person, there are going to be people not happy with the decision,” he said. “One thing that we all agreed on as a board was that we weren’t going to have a calendar that was going to make everybody happy. This was the calendar we felt that was the best for the community and that’s why we’ve put it forward.”

The next Board of Education meeting is Feb. 5 at the Woodmere Education Center, 1 Johnson Ave. in Woodmere, at 7:30 p.m.

Have an opinion about school calendars? Send your letter to the editor to jbessen@liherald.com.