Town Suffers Financial Penalty Due to Missing Wood End School Days

Reading will suffer a small loss in state funding this year due to a miscalculation on kids’ school days.

All students in Massachusetts are required to attend a minimum of 180 days of school, and Reading usually exceeds that number by one day. 

But, this year, students at attended just 179 days of school due to the winter’s weather.

“I found out about it pretty late in June, so it was too late to do anything at that point,” said Superintendent John Doherty.

Wood End had been closed an additional two days this winter while other schools were open because the district needed to . To compensate for that, Doherty scheduled Wood End to complete classes on a Thursday while the rest of the district finished its classes the previous day.

“The mistake I made is that when I did that, I had the rest of the district go one less day,” Doherty said. “It was a mistake. It was an honest mistake that I made.”

As a result, he said, the state will cut $4,115 from the district’s Chapter 70 funding. Doherty said that he tried to get a waiver from the state, but that the state issued no waivers this year.

Chapter 70 funding supports public education, and Doherty said the town receives about $9 million from the program, making the $4,115 penalty relatively small, but the loss still comes during a difficult situation.