Braintree Will Petition for 180-School Day Exemption, Other Options on the Table

With weeks of unprecedented bad weather pushing the last day of school in Braintree towards the end of June, the school committee took extraordinary action to make sure school ended before July.

The committee voted unanimously to petition the Department of Education to give Braintree an exemption for the 180 days of school requirement. The exemption, if granted, would allow Braintree to complete the school year with less than the required amount of days necessary.

Mayor Joseph Sullivan called the waiver request the best solution for the situation.

“Beyond the snow fall, trying to figure out how we’re going to end this school year has caused a lot of anxiety and it doesn’t have to be so. The best solution would be to seek a waiver. We can be the first to suggest that they should look at granting a waiver and I guess tonight we speak for Braintree but for all communities that are going though the same level of decision making,” Sullivan said during the committee’s meeting on Monday.

As it stands, students in kindergarten through ninth grade will end school on June 30 while tenth and eleventh graders need to make up one day.

If the waiver is denied, all options are on the table to make sure the school year ends by June 30. Solutions include Saturday school, school during April vacation, an early release day on Good Friday, and an extended learning project that could be done outside of school during the break in April.

“I’ve heard from everyone. There is no easy solution here. There are going to be people that had commitments for whom that will be a hardship. We are going to work through it as best as we can,” Superintendent Maureen Murray said.

Murray said the extended learning option would involve students doing work outside of class, giving viewing a documentary and writing an essay about what they watched as an example.

There is no deadline for a response from the Department of Education once the waiver is requested.

Like the rest of the South Shore, Braintree was hit exceptionally hard by the February snowstorms. During the last week of school before the February break, students did not attend a single day of school due to the storm and cleanup required.