Parents Upset with School District over Communications During Outages

Connecticut Light & Power wasn’t the only entity that East Granby residents had a problem with concerning communication issues.

Indeed, at Monday’s Board of Education regular meeting, parents expressed their displeasure over what they called a lack of information provided by the school district during the power outages that resulted in the cancellation of a week and a half of school from Oct. 31 to Nov. 8.

There were two major issues raised by parents at the meeting: the first was that the school district decided to cancel school on a day-to-day basis in the week following the storm from Oct. 31 to Nov. 4; most neighboring communities announced that classes were canceled for the entire week when it became clear on that Tuesday or Wednesday that power would not be restored quickly.

“That made it difficult to plan,” East Granby parent Karen Velleman said after the meeting.

“It also gave people the idea that power might be restored that Thursday or Friday, because they didn’t cancel school,” resident Wayne Guilmartin added.

In addition, the school district announced that, despite some 95 percent of the town had power restored by Sunday, Nov. 6, classes would not be held on Nov. 7 and 8 for previously scheduled in-service days.

That meant that with Veterans Day on Friday, the children returned to school for just two days last week. In addition, the school district must make up for five days of lost class time (Tuesday was already a planned day off.)

“It wasn’t productive for the kids,” said Velleman said that the school district made the announcement without explanation.

The difficulties of the cancellation of so much class was evident, as the school board spent much of the meeting wrangling over how to change the schedule to account for the lost time, with the prevailing opinion that four days of February vacation - Feb. 21-24 - would be forfeited. Monday, Feb. 20, is Presidents Day, so that day would remain a holiday with no school.

The remaining day to be made up was subject to debate, with suggestions ranging from Dec. 23, Jan. 16, forfeiting an April vacation day or tacking on a day of school in June.

All of those suggestions have problems. December 23, which would be a half day, constitutes a holiday for school employees, as Christmas Eve falls on a Saturday, meaning that collective bargaining issues come into play.

January 16 is the day off scheduled for Martin Luther King Day, which would represent, in Superintendent of Schools Christine Mahoney’s words, “a public relations nightmare” if school were held then.

School board members were loathe to start eating into April vacation, as that time frame is the buffer in the event that snowstorms result in numerous cancellations over the winter.

There wasn’t great support for adding class time in June, as such time is generally not as productive as it is earlier in the year.

Resident Darcy Walsh said that, in the future, the school district should hold school on Columbus Day, like many towns in the area, and also look into having classes on Veterans Day as well.

No decision was made at the meeting, as the school board must amend its policy to enable it to make changes to the school calendar.

As the policy currently stands, the school board has no authority to make the changes that it wants to make. A special meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 16 at 6:30 p.m. to read into the record a new board policy that enables such calendar amendments.

Regardless, as Velleman stated at the meeting, parents want to be kept in the loop going forward.

“Communication with the parents is critical,” Velleman said. “If half of the people [the parents] doesn’t have the information, then it can’t support the other half [the schools]. Just remember to communicate with us other than ‘We don’t have school.’ Tell us the rationale.”