Halloween: Love it or hate it, there’s no in-between. At least, that’s what a number of public schools across the country have discovered this year.
A Michigan elementary school decided this fall that it wouldn’t celebrate Halloween, tossing its annual celebrations, costumes, classroom parties — even its Halloween parade. Galewood Early Elementary School’s principal, Steve Chartier, cited a need to “protect educational time” on Oct. 31 in an email to parents announcing the changes. Learn first, celebrate later, Chartier said.
But this wasn’t cutting it for Galewood parents, whose complaints prompted the school to reinstate its Halloween festivities.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Hayes told the Lansing State Journal of the Halloween ban. “I was super upset because my son had such a good time last year. They’re taking away all the fun stuff that allows kids to be kids.”
Another Galewood parent, Morgan Pouch, said that if the school had not reinstated its Halloween celebration, she would have kept her 5-year-old son home from class and brought him to Parkview Elementary instead so he could watch that school’s costume parade.
“It’s very unfair. He dressed up like a vampire last year and really enjoyed dressing up in class. He was looking forward to it again this year and cried when I told him he couldn’t. Kids remember Halloween at school. I think it’s important to them,” Pouch said.
Over in Chicago, political correctness killed Halloween in the Evanston-Skokie school district.
“While we recognize that Halloween is a fun tradition for many, it is not a holiday that is celebrated by everyone for various reasons and we want to honor that,” the district said in a message to parents, according to NBC 5. “We are also aware of the range of inequities that are embedded in Halloween celebrations that take place as part of the school day and the unintended negative impact that it can have on students, families, and staff.”
And to a school administrator, nothing is more terrifying than appearing politically incorrect.
