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School District Kills Then Resurrects Halloween

It's not exactly trick-or-treat, but the Milford school system has done an about-face just days after canceling elementary school Halloween parades.

By Daniel Tepfer

It's not exactly trick-or-treat, but the Milford school system has done an about-face just days after canceling elementary school Halloween parades.

Yes, kids, the parades are back on.

In a letter posted on the Milford schools' website, Superintendent Elizabeth Feser announced, "In an effort to move forward," the parades would be held Oct. 30.

The parades will be for children in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, and are now scheduled to run from 8:45 to 9:05 a.m. at those schools with early starting times and from 9:15 to 9:35 at those schools that start later.

"(K)nowing that the issue of Halloween is detracting from what we are truly about, and our time with our children around teaching and learning is most important, we have decided to reverse our decision," Feser's letter states.

She wrote that the decision to cancel the parade had been called "un-American."

According to an earlier letter sent to parents, the decision to not have Halloween parades "arose out of numerous incidents of children being excluded from activities due to religion, cultural beliefs, etc."

But in the letter posted Monday, Feser said Milford schools never banned Halloween.

During the last five years, she wrote, K-2 schools held Halloween parades, while Grade 3-5 schools did not. After reconfiguration of Milford elementary schools to a prekindergarten-to-fifth-grade format, Feser wrote, individual school principals chose to develop their own Halloween activities in conjunction with PTAs instead of having parades.

The response to those decisions proved too strong to ignore, although Feser maintained that criticism of the districts' Halloween plans has been unfair.

"The false accusations that have been made are irresponsible," she wrote, "and the antithesis of what we try to teach children."

Rebecca Lilley, a parent who started an online petition to restore the in school Halloween tradition, said she was pleased with the reversal, but put off by Feser's letter.

"We were never attacking the integrity of the Milford school system," Lilley told the Milford Board of Education on Monday night. "I love the Milford school system."

But another parent, Christopher Thomas, said he knew the real reason the change was made, and called the negative reaction to it "horrific."

Instead of a short school parade, Thomas said, an after-school "bash" would have not only included a costume parade, but a dance and trick-or-treat event. He was on the committee planning it.

"We knew what the real deal was," Thomas said. "The lies that were told were just awful."

Staff writers Linda Conner Lambeck and Frank Juliano contributed to this report.

(c)2015 the Connecticut Post (Bridgeport, Conn.)

Caroline Cournoyer is GOVERNING's senior web editor.
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