Sandra Hoffman, a mother of three kids in Secaucus schools, didn’t mean to open a can of worms when she spoke out against the weeklong winter break scheduled for next school year at the Feb. 23 school board meeting. She simply said she just couldn’t find baby-sitters to take care of her kids that long. “I used to rely on my parents when this happened in the past,” she said. “But now I don’t have them to help me and it’s a problem.” Hoffman, like many other working mothers in Secaucus, faces such a dilemma due to the school district’s calendar, which provides a week’s vacation in February instead of several holidays such as Martin Luther King Jr.’s Birthday, President’s Day and Columbus Day. The students are off, but their parents are not. “I can get a baby sitter for a day at a time, but the week is just too much,” she said. “Most of those holidays, I have off, so I don’t need a baby sitter.” Hoffman’s complaint has long been a thorny issue on the board, where in the past, Board Members Doug MacCormack and Elanore Reinl argued that the extra week off in the middle of the school year put a burden on parents. They said that, besides causing scheduling conflicts between parents and kids, the week off also could actually be disruptive to kids, who would be assigned work for the vacation period but would likely get out of sync with classroom habits. The week break was introduced in the mid-1980s as an energy saving measure, but has since become a boon to the school district that reduces costs in heating and salaries. Schools officials said by lumping many of the holidays into a single week, educators lessened the impact single holidays had on the educational process. They noted the considerable savings the mid-February closing had on expenses at the schools. They also said that holidays are no longer universally recognized with businesses, government offices and banks often staying open when they did not in the past. “Not all parents get the traditional holidays off any more,” said Board Member William Donnelly. “That’s something we figured into the equation.” Board member Edward Rittberg said the schools have been scheduling holidays this way for most of the last decade without many complaints. Reinl disputed this, saying she had received complaints every year from people who said they were forced to use their vacations to make sure their kids were tended to. MacCormack also noted that this week does not correspond to the schedule established by the Hudson County Technical School, which has a satellite school in Secaucus High School. “If you want this board to vote to got back to the traditional holiday schedule, you’re going to have to get people to contact us,” MacCormack told Hoffman. While some board members privately asked what parents did to provide for their children during the summer, when lack of school leaves them with nearly two months to fill, parents in the past said summers have many more programs to accommodate kids, from daily recreation programs to summer camps. In winter, they say, they have no such options.
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