'Halloween Break' Proposed For Salem Public Schools

SALEM, MA — A long Halloween weekend and an extra day off after New Year's Day was part of a proposed 2023-24 school calendar proposed to the Salem School Committee on Monday night.

The calendar, which will be further discussed and voted on at the next School Committee meeting scheduled for Feb. 27, is a change from last year when the School Committee voted to give an extra week after the holiday break, which was met with support from students and staff happy to have the well-padded vacation, as well as concern from many families who said it was difficult to arrange for child care at a time when most schools and businesses were back in session.

"In general, more people didn't like it than liked it," Zrike said of the two-week holiday break. "It was a little more mixed than I thought (it would be)."

The schedule that Superintendent Steve Zrike proposed on Monday replaced the weeklong break with an extra day off after New Year's Day, which is on a Monday in 2024, and days off on Oct. 30 and Oct. 31 both to provide a bit of a fall respite for students and staff, and because of the practical difficulties of maneuvering through the Witch City on those days.

"Given that Halloween is on a Tuesday, Monday would be no school so it would be a four-day weekend for people to decide whether they want to stay in Salem or flee far from the city at that time," Zrike said. "We learned the hard way this year that it is not a good idea to have school on Halloween. I saw it. I didn't have to hear it. I saw it with my own eyes as I was trying to get out of town and as many of our children were trying to get home, and our staff was trying to get home on that day."

This past Halloween was the first since 2019 when the holiday, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors to the holiday's unofficial hometown each year, had fallen on a school day. Zrike became the Salem superintendent in the spring of 2020.

The extra four days after New Year's Day this academic year were chosen over two alternatives for fall mini-breaks — including one around Halloween — last year. Salem School Committee member Dr. Kristin Pangallo pushed for those winter dates when the calendar was discussed last year out of long-term concerns with a predicted third yearly surge in coronavirus cases right after the holidays, which did not really materialize this past January.

"I suggested it because of the intense COVID spike that we experienced last winter," she said. "Fortunately, we did not see the same burden this winter, so I agree that extended break does not seem necessary any longer, and I am glad that we won't have to take that into account going forward."

Other days off include Election Day — Salem schools are used as voting locations — in November, with the potential of including the primary election day in September as well.

While Zrike said he was not proposing them for next year, he did introduce some possible considerations for more substantial changes to the school calendar down the line that include the elimination of Good Friday as a school holiday and consolidating the February and April vacations into one "spring break" in March — which is the way it's done in most of the rest of the country.

Good Friday is one of only two religious holidays that includes a day off from school — there is no day off for Easter Sunday — and is the only one that is not a federal holiday, as has been the case for nearly 150 years with Christmas.

Zrike allowed that any attempt to consolidate the February and April breaks into one March vacation would likely have to come in at least a regional collaboration with other North Shore school districts to help align with planned family vacations.

"I am just putting it out there because a lot of people shared that (in a family survey with 135 responses district-wide)," Zrike said. "There are a lot of Midwesterners in the audience here who know what I am talking about related to the March holiday. But that would require coordination with some other communities."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)