History Lesson

Some reasons to keep school open on Inauguration Day

NO QUESTION that the feel-good move for area schools is to cancel classes for Inauguration Day. It's not every day that history gets made. Still, the last-minute rush by school districts to declare Jan. 20 a holiday glosses over some drawbacks that deserve a second look.

Schools in the District, Alexandria and Fairfax County don't face these problems because they planned all along to be closed for the day. But places that didn't incorporate Jan. 20 into the school calendar are now reckoning with the historic nature of Barack Obama, the first African American elected president, taking the oath of office. Carving out an extra day at this point, as Montgomery County Superintendent Jerry D. Weast made clear, carries real costs. Some are educational, such as students missing out on a chance to take a makeup high school assessment exam. Some are financial, such as the danger of losing one of the four contingency days for weather-related closings and being forced, if the winter is bad, to schedule an additional day. That would cost at least $600,000 when schools are being pressed to save money. And working parents would have to make other arrangements for their children, not to mention 36,000 students who receive free and reduced-price meals and who might have to go without breakfast or lunch.

It's likely that Montgomery will yield -- as did Prince George's and Loudoun counties and others -- to a drumbeat of pressure to shut the schools. No doubt many teachers and students would seek to attend the inauguration. But given the difficulty of getting tickets, uncertain weather and the sure-to-be unprecedented numbers of people attending, many others might make other use of what would turn, thanks to Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Jan. 19, into a four-day weekend. Liberal leave policies should be in effect, but for many, the classroom would be the right place to view and discuss this historic event.