Members of the Barrington School Committee will soon consider eliminating religious holidays from the school district calendar, but they want to hear from residents first.

Committee members discussed the issue at their meeting on Thursday, April 24, but stopped short of voting on any changes. Instead, they chose to invite the public to the next meeting where the committee is expected to vote on the calendar. 

In the meantime, the committee asked administrators to share a press release with the community in an effort to raise awareness of the upcoming decision. 

Committee member Frazier Bell opened the discussion on April 24 by stating that he is in favor of removing religious holidays from the school calendar. 

Currently the district observes a handful of religious holidays, including Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Good Friday, and Eid Al-Fitr. 

Bell said it made sense to remove the religious holidays from the school calendar and just allow people to take those days off if they want to observe the holiday. He also said teachers in the district should not schedule tests or major projects for the religious holidays. 

Bell, who called for more public feedback, said the district’s school year continues into late June, due in part to the religious holidays taken off during year. 

Committee member Karen Rasnick said part of the reason why her family first moved to Barrington was because the school district observed the Jewish religious holidays. Rasnick, who worked as a teacher in Providence schools for many years, said that when Providence removed religious holidays from its calendar, 250 teachers did not show up for work. She added that it took school districts a long time to add those religious holidays.

Bell said only 1.9 percent of Barrington teachers stated that they would not be able to work on religious holidays, should the district remove them from the calendar. 

Rasnick said she was not comfortable with it. 

Committee member Tim McNamara said he spoke with some of Barrington principals who voiced concerns about staffing levels. However, McNamara added that he was leaning toward removing the holidays from the calendar — he also said that the district needs to be tolerant of all religions. McNamara said the district is currently picking and choosing which religious holidays to observe.

Committee member Liz Singh said Barrington schools do not currently observe Diwali, which is an important holiday for the Indian population. Singh said she has spoken with other members of the Indian community and they are upset that their holidays are not being recognized by the school district while other faiths’ holidays are. 

Rasnick then asked if students would need to go to school on Christmas, should the district remove religious holidays from the calendar, but TJ Peck said Christmas was a federal holiday.  

Peck then questioned whether the district should consider eliminating one of the three school vacation weeks. He also said that he expects Barrington will continue growing more and more diverse, which could lead to future challenges with scheduling religious holidays. 

Peck said he wanted to hear from the community. 

Bell said he was surprised that no one from town showed up to discuss the issue at the April 24 meeting. 

Eventually, the committee decided to continue the discussion at its May meeting and, in the meantime, send out a communication to Barrington residents.