The State College Area School Board voted unanimously on Monday to cancel spring break for 2021 and redistribute the days off throughout the semester.
The school district began considering amendments to the calendar after Penn State announced it was canceling its spring break to discourage travel during the COVID-19 pandemic and replacing it with three ‘wellness days.’
Instead of having off from March 8-12 as planned in the original 2020-21 school calendar, SCASD students the five days have been reallocated as follows:
– No school on Monday, Feb. 15 – President’s Day
– No school on Thursday, March 11 and Friday, March 12
– No school on Friday, April 30
– Final student day moves from Thursday, June 3 to Wednesday, June 2
The amended calendar was the recommendation of the district’s calendar committee and one of three options included in a survey of 941 employees. About 57 percent of respondents chose one of two options that interspersed most of the days throughout the school year. A third option would have added two off days and moved the final day of school to May 27.
Superintendent Bob O’Donnell said the decision primarily was about discouraging travel during a week off, but added that Penn State typically having a weeklong spring break is why SCASD does as well.
O’Donnell said faculty opinion on the change is ‘mixed,’ when asked by board member Lori Bedell whether the State College Area Educators Association had weighed in.
‘The association hasn’t taken a position as a whole and said ‘We recommend this or that,” O’Donnell said. ‘Obviously they had members of the association, including the current president, on the calendar committee. So they had a voice in the recommendation that came forward. That doesn’t mean those individuals said that was their personal pick but the voice at the committee table does have several faculty members including the past president and current president of the teachers association.’
Two parents who spoke about the change during public comment asked the board to rethink the change.
‘I understand the desire to limit travel and to minimize risk taking but that seems really paternalistic and not really fair to the parents. We’ve put up with a lot of change this fall and it’s really, really frustrating,’ said John Wallace, the father of two children in the district.
‘I don’t see how canceling spring break and adding three long weekends is actually going to discourage travel.’
Wallace added that if the district was trying to align with Penn State’s calendar it should have made the days off more closely match Penn State’s wellness days, which are scheduled for Feb. 9, March 11 and April 7.
Kimi Waite, a district employee and mother of three SCASD students, said deciding to remove the break after the school year already is well underway is ‘inconsiderate and offensive,’ adding that she does not believe it will stop anyone from traveling.
‘…It implies that the adults, employees and parents, in our school community are not capable of making appropriate and safe decisions,’ she said.
Waite also said her students would not attend school nor would she be at work because of previously scheduled plans for the spring break week.
O’Donnell said that the district intends to look at the circumstances and work to accommodate staff and students who already had plans for spring break week.
‘If we have school those three days there would be some missed work but we would accommodate those,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t be penalized.’
