by Clarence Fanto - The Berkshire Eagle
LENOX — For students and families, having the entire week of Thanksgiving off from school proved to be a big hit last month.
Last spring, the Lenox district debuted a new school-year calendar that included a trial run of a full Thanksgiving vacation week, not just a few days. This tweak to the calendar doesn't add school days in June, which varies depending on snow days. That’s because two professional development days for staff, that were previously scheduled elsewhere on the school year calendar, were moved to the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving week.
By and large, Lenox parents and guardians were grateful for the additional days off, according to Superintendent William Collins. The feedback cited benefits such as more family time, easier travel planning and eliminating the need to take off school days for family travel. Thanksgiving is the busiest travel holiday in the United States.
Collins told The Eagle that some families start Thanksgiving travel on the Monday and Tuesday before the Thursday holiday, spiking the absentee rate. Traditionally, Lenox observed Thanksgiving break on Wednesday, the Thursday of Thanksgiving and Friday.
At a School Committee meeting, Collins said two thirds of families responded to a survey about the change, and 80 percent expressed a preference for keeping the full-week Thanksgiving break for students.
For those not traveling, The Lenox Community Center was able to host 50 children during the two extra days off from school, the superintendent added.
"Travel was much less stressful and felt a lot safer due to being able to leave way before the usual busy days before Thanksgiving," one parent said in response to the survey.
Another voiced appreciation for having the entire week off.
“We were able to have more family time and with family we aren’t normally able to see with a three-day off schedule,” the parent said. “Thank you for trying this and I hope it continues in the future."
A faculty survey demonstrated 3-to-1 support for having professional development days on the Monday and Tuesday of Thanksgiving break. Over the two days, administrators, staff and faculty attended training at Lenox Memorial Middle and High School and focused on strategies promoting academic excellence and student well-being.
The staff selected training from among 53 sessions covering 22 separate topics, including empowering educators with instructional tools, artificial intelligence in education, educational equity, culturally and linguistically responsive instruction, unconscious bias in the classroom, the impact of childhood trauma, and instructional tools to empower educators.
Phil Fogelman, founder of Changemakers for Good LLC, offered a training on "Building a Culture of Belonging in School," a main focus of the district’s continued efforts to create a "Brave and Safe Space" culture over the past few years.
Other presenters included Darcy Fernandes, senior associate commissioner for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE); Tracey Benson, CEO and founder of The Anti-Racism Leadership Institute; Jessica Bazinet, educator preparation literacy specialist for DESE; childhood trauma expert Dr. James Levine; and several educators from Morris Elementary and the middle and high school.
Collins described the purpose of the trial run as “to see if offering a variety of Lenox-specific presentations over two days of back-to-back professional development would better meet the needs of our educators, and ultimately the needs of our students. ... The majority of feedback from the educators has been appreciative and they offered many ideas on how to make adjustments so that next year's professional development is even better.”