The School Committee recently announced that because of the week without power we would need to make up the four days, and that we will make these days up during  our original April vacation week. Our April vacation will be one day long instead of five. This has to be the worst idea I have ever heard of. There were plenty of other options to make up the missed days and April has to be not only the worst of the choices but the least liked option by the student body.

The School Committee could probably argue it is our own fault because a telephone survey was sent out a little while after the power outage. There is just one flaw there. Most of the schools population did not get to vote because they still did not have power for a while after the initial outage, and thus would not have received the survey or voted.

The Cub held a poll that asked what students wanted, and I can say with a hundred percent confidence the majority of the student body definitely did not want to come in April.

April had to be the worst of all vacations to eliminate. Between the end of February break and end of school there are three to four months of straight school. After this much time in school without a substantial break students are going to become fatigued, irritated, and just tired of school in general.

Besides the lack of morale students would have April is the vacation in which everyone travels. A good amount of students travel in April because it has the nicer weather of the two vacations, so with April vacation being gone and trips already being booked a good amount of students will be missing school for the majority of the week.

The administration stated they will disregard students’ absences that week if they show them a previously booked trip, but it is not the absence that students stress over, it is the tons of make-up work. Besides that it is wasteful of teachers and students time if a whole bunch of kids are missing because then no one is going to teach only to reteach it to the majority of the class when they return from their vacation.

It also appears as an irresponsible act. Through LHS staff and organization two trips have been planned for the week of our original April vacation. I believe canceling April vacation was an irresponsible act while through the LHS community two trips were already preplanned for this week.

This was known by the administration and there is no way it could have been ignored.

Eliminating February vacation would be the ideal option for students. Plus it would only be four days because February 20 is Presidents Day and we are not allowed in school.

I can see rationally though that why February would be choice for students it would not be for those on the School Committee. The threat for snow days within February is prominent and they are afraid that if we get rid of February vacations snow days might occur during that week. This is reasonable, but there are still other options.

I never thought I would actually voluntarily say this but school on Saturdays is a better option. Last year, because of the large amount of snow days, we had a half day of Saturday school, and it was not that bad. This could work. Plus, by the time students get out it would be the time most of them would be just waking up; thus no one’s Saturday would be a waste. I think this should be option number one.

The second best option would be take two days from each vacation. February 20 and April 16 are both days within the normal week of vacations that are holidays that require no school by state laws. So they would only have to take one more day away from that week, thus making up for the four days we need to make up.

And April of course, would have been last on the list of options.