Sachem Schools in session on President’s Day

The Sachem Central School District will be in session on Monday, Feb. 18, President’s Day, according to Sachem Superintendent James Nolan.

Mr. Nolan issued a statement to the staff, students and community Wednesday evening announcing the decision.

“As you may or may not know, New York State requires 180 days of school.  At this point, due to Hurricane Sandy and snow, we will only have 179 days if we do not lose another day.

We will be changing our current calendar as follows:

• All schools will now be open on Monday, Feb. 18. 
• If we do not lose another day, the Passover/Easter/Spring Break will remain from March 25-29.
• If we lose another school day due to the weather, we will be forced to open on March 25. 

I realize that the weather and the calendar have required great patience.  Thank you very much for both your patience and your support.  Hopefully, Mother Nature will begin to cooperate. Again, please know that all schools will be open this Monday, Feb. 18.”

As you may have seen earlier this week, the official Sachem Central School District Facebook page featured a poll asking for input from the community if they would be in favor of having school on President’s Day.

While this was not the only method used to make a formal decision, the input did help. There were more than 1,300 votes, 200-plus comments and almost 22,000 people saw the poll in their Facebook timeline, according to our Facebook page insights. The final vote was 802 YES (61 percent) and 507 NO when asked who was in favor of having school on Monday.