Parents Split On Merging Winter & Spring Vacations

With a holiday today and a Friday off for students to make time for professional development, the prospect of more four-day weekends was contemplated by a districtwide survey recently conducted at Mount Greylock Regional's three schools.

School committees in the district for years have looked at this with the idea of eliminating one of the two vacation weeks in order to lessen the need to extend the school year later into June because of snow days.

This fall's regional survey found a split within the community, with 59 percent of the district's parents favoring a new approach to the calendar and 53 percent of the faculty and staff opposed.

IBerkshires.com reports that Mount Greylock's director of academic technology reported on the results of a survey to gauge support for revising the school calendar to consolidate the February and April vacation weeks into a single week off in March.

457 parents and 95 teachers and staff responded to the survey, which was conducted online and in hard copies.