One of Vermont’s most diverse districts stumbled into the culture wars this month when one principal announced a cherished annual tradition – the Halloween parade – wouldn’t return this year.
Edmunds Elementary School in Burlington will instead hold a harvest celebration at the end of the month, school officials say, where students will sing songs about fall and don paper bag hats made in class.
“I know that this will be disappointing to some of our students, but there are enough students who are marginalized for any number of reasons that it isn’t appropriate to continue a tradition that has an effect of dividing students,” Edmunds Principal Shelley Mathias wrote in a newsletter home to parents.
Seven Days and local television articles about the subject sparked hundreds of comments on social media. And Russell Elek, a spokesperson for the district, declined to even name other districts that had recently changed their practices around Halloween for fear of the backlash when a reporter inquired.
“After some of the vitriol some of us have directly received, I really don’t want to offer up suggestions on who to call and put anyone intentionally or unintentionally in the shoes some of us are currently in,” he wrote in an email.
Administrators say the annual ritual can have the effect of segregating students – some families won’t participate for religious reasons, certain parents have neither the time nor money to make costumes, and kids with trauma could be upset by representations of death and ghosts.
In guidance sent out to all school administrators before Edmunds officially scrapped its tradition, Superintendent Yaw Obeng reminded educators to create spaces where kids who couldn’t participate in Halloween traditions could instead engage in “meaningful alternative activities.” But he added that was still less than ideal.
“No school should be holding an event in which all students cannot participate because of religious or cultural beliefs,” Obeng wrote.
The announcement has upset many parents. Kimberly Price, a mother with two children at the elementary school, said she’s been befuddled by the decision. A frequent volunteer at Edmunds, she said she thought the school did a good job making sure all kids were included.
“What I witnessed in the past seven years was just absolute, creative joy,” she said. “I wasn’t seeing the dark side of it. And it’s not really being explained in a way that I understand.”
And in general, Price says she feels like the district is slowly chipping away at the local rituals that make Burlington schools special.
“I wish that these cultural traditions didn’t have to be stripped back to the point of taking them away,” she said.
But Vermont districts aren’t the only ones doing away with the hallmark fall celebration over concerns about equity. Schools everywhere from Washington to Connecticut have done away with Halloween parades, and each time elicited strong – sometimes incensed – reactions from certain parents.
And many Green Mountain State administrators said Halloween celebrations during the school day were nixed several years ago in their districts, mostly because of the same concerns raised by Obeng.
In the Mount Mansfield Unified Union School district, Superintendent John Alberghini said it’s been several years since there were any “schoolwide Halloween celebrations,” although the student council at the high school sponsors an optional costume contest. (Activities are also organized by parent groups for after school.) It feels like administrators have long been moving away from in-school Halloween celebrations, Alberghini said, largely because they could exclude certain kids.
“My assumption was that this was the norm,” he said.
In the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union, superintendent Jeanné Collins said one school, Neshobe Elementary in Brandon, still holds an annual Halloween parade. (It is canceled this year, but only because of a town construction project.)
The community feels enormous ownership over the event, Collins said, and it’s difficult to imagine it going away anytime soon. But she feels some reservations about it – despite best efforts, the ritual still highlights the haves and the have-nots.
“Every child will still have a costume, but there’s still an impact on the child, who knows that it’s different for them,” she said.
Jay Nichols, the executive director of the Vermont Principals Association, said he had long objected to Halloween events during the school day, mostly because they cut into instructional time. But now, Nichols said he was just as concerned – if not more – about the equity piece.
“As our population gets a little bit more diverse, there’s more mindfulness as to what things might be objectionable to a higher percentage of our community, or might be leaving some kids out,” he said.
