THE COMMUNITY ENTRANCE at the Galvin Middle School is where all Wakefield voters enter to cast their election ballots. (Mark Sardella Photo)
By MARK SARDELLA
WAKEFIELD — In an effort to avoid having the first day of school fall on the same day as the Sept. 6 State Primary Election, the next school year will begin on Wednesday Sept. 7 instead of Tuesday, Sept. 6. The School Committee approved the 2022-2023 School Calendar at their meeting this week.
They also changed the Columbus Day holiday to “Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day.”
In 2018 the Town Council unanimously backed a proposal by Town Clerk Betsy Sheeran to abandon neighborhood precinct polling places in favor of centralized voting. Since then, all Wakefield residents have cast their election ballots at the Galvin Middle School.
School Committee members voted last week to set the first day of school on Wednesday, Sept. 7 in order to avoid a conflict with parents dropping kids off at the Galvin for the first day of school at the same time as people are arriving to vote in the Primary.
Normally, the State Primary Election would be later in September and would not impact the first day of school. But the issue regarding this year’s Primary Election apparently is the state’s need to finalize the November 8 ballot for military and overseas voters 45 days before the November election. To know who to place on that final November ballot, state officials need to know the primary winners, which necessitates holding the primary earlier than the Sept. 20 date originally scheduled.
School Committee Chair Suzy Veilleux said that it was likely that no one ever anticipated a primary elect so early in September when the decision was made to go to centralized voting.
Veilleux observed that dropping students off at the Galvin can be chaotic enough on a normal school day. But the likelihood for confusion is even greater on the first day of the school year because a lot of parents of new 5th-graders have never done student drop-off there before. Adding voters to the mix would just add to the potential for problems, she said.
Superintendent Doug Lyons added that in addition to the approximately 300 new 5th graders whose parents have never experienced Galvin drop-off and pick-up before, the available parking for Galvin staff would be cut in half to make room for voter parking on Election Day. He noted that school could start the previous week, so the first day of school would not coincide with Election Day.
But School Committee member Thomas Markham said that for the school year to start before Labor Day, the decision should have been made much earlier in the process.
Markham claimed that the schools weren’t involved in the decision to change to centralized voting.
“We were told,” he said. Still, he acknowledged the part of the deal when the Galvin was built was that the gymnasium and auditorium would be available for community use. It would be hard for the schools to push back now against the town using the school for centralized voting, he said.
School Committee member Amy Leeman said that she favored starting school on Tuesday, Sept. 6, suggesting that it should be possible to manage both the fist day of school and voting.
“We’re asking six other schools to start a day later because of one school,” she pointed out.
School Committee member Stephen Ingalls observed that starting school on Tuesday, Sept. 6 is attractive to parents and the teachers’ union because it means the last day of school would be earlier and would fall on a Friday, June 16. But, he noted, there is always a strong likelihood of at least a couple of snow days, meaning the last day of school would be pushed into the following week anyway. So starting school a day later likely wouldn’t matter.
The vote of the School Committee to start the next school year on Wednesday, Sept. 7 was 5-1. Amy Leeman cast the “no” vote.