By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — The Board of Education has decided to give Thursdays a try.

Starting with its first meeting of the 2023-24 school year on Aug. 24, the seven-member panel will hold its twice-a-month business meetings on Thursdays instead of Mondays.

The time and location — at 7 p.m. in the Staples High School cafeteria — will remain the same.

The change, discussed by the board for the past two meeting-setting cycles, comes after the town’s Planning and Zoning Commission switched last year from meeting on Thursdays to Mondays, leaving the fourth day of the work week up for grabs.

“I feel like, give it a whirl,” board Vice Chairwoman Liz Heyer said last November when the board approved the 2023-24 meeting calendar.

 If it doesn’t work, she said the board can always decide next year to switch back to Mondays.

“Nothing is etched in stone,” she added.

Meeting later in the week, according to some board members and school administrators, could make for an easier start to the following week.

“I worry about teachers, here late on a Monday,” board member Kevin Christie said at the time the vote was taken. “It accumulates over the course of the week.”

For years prior, there had been a rhythm to town meetings — school board on Mondays, Representative Town Meeting on Tuesdays, Board of Finance on Wednesdays and Planning and Zoning Commission on Thursdays.

That changed when the P&Z moved its regular meeting date to Monday nights in February 2022.

Connecticut’s open meeting law requires government bodies to set their annual meeting schedule by Jan. 31 of each year.

There is no rule that town bodies can’t meet on the same nights, but it tends to pose conflicts.

Since the P&Z moved to Mondays, Elio Longo, the school district’s chief financial officer, and other school administrators have missed the start of more than one school board meeting to make a presentation before the zoning commission.

When the possibility of a switch was first broached in 2021, Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice said he was indifferent about meeting nights, calling it a board decision.

The following year, with Thursdays suddenly vacated by the P&Z, Scarice said Thursdays might prove better for parents and staff.

Some school board meetings last until midnight. It’s not a productive way to start the work week, Scarice and others conceded.

Scarice said a possible switch to Wednesdays was investigated, but that would be problematic for the board’s cable access provider. which live-streams meetings, he said.

Board Secretary Neil Phillips said Thursday meetings might conflict with some school or community events, but that was not enough to sway him from giving the change a try.

“You just get used to whatever you do,” board member Dorie Hordon added at the time.

If the administration can get packets about a meeting’s agenda to board members by the preceding Friday, as now happens, it would give them more time to go over the material before a Thursday meeting, Hordon added.

Although the vote to switch to Thursday was unanimous, some board members remained indifferent.

 “It’s been Monday forever,” said board member Robert Harrington. “I am not necessarily convinced of the need to change.”

Board Chairwoman Lee Goldstein, who said she was also indifferent to the change, said this week in an email that the board has not received any feedback about the issue.

“It’s probably too soon,” she said. “Check back after a few meetings.”

When the P&Z switched to Mondays, there was immediate pushback, though the commission has continued to meet on Mondays.

Goldstein surmises the pushback could have been caused by the conflict that occurred when zoning and school boards began meeting on the same night, forcing the public to choose between attending or watching one or the other.

That won’t be the case this year.

“We look at this as one year, and then we can have an evaluation process,” Goldstein said when the Thursday meeting date was selected last November.

The revised schedule also sets the board’s first meeting of the new school year several days before classes begin Tuesday, Aug. 29, instead of the night before.

In most cases, the school board will meet the first and third Thursdays of the month. An exception is made during budget season in January, when the board will meeting four times, including a Friday.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.