Dartmouth Public Schools Superintendent Bonny Gifford plans to do away with homework over school vacations, and hopes to develop guidelines for homework assignments, she announced at the October 17 School Committee meeting.

The plans come after a public showing of the film “Race to Nowhere” last year. The documentary highlights problems of "achievement culture" in schools, including added stress with huge homework loads.

Committee Chairman Christopher Oliver weighed in on Gifford’s proposal, drawing from his own experience. He has one child in Dartmouth High school and one in elementary school.

“It was a constant battle for my older one when she was in elementary school with homework,” said Oliver. “I think it ends up at some point being parents sitting there with their child doing the work for them.”

Gifford also referenced parental feedback explaining the difficulties in planning family vacations when students have large projects or papers to complete.

Currently, the district has no homework guidelines in place. Gifford will issue a memo in the coming week advising staff that she plans to do away with homework beginning with Thanksgiving vacation. This recommendation will also apply to Christmas, February, and April vacations. Formal policies for homework will likely not be instated until the next school year as discussions unfold.

Committee member Shannon Jenkins noted that there are socioeconomic factors play into class assignments, because some parents are able to help children with homework for several hours, while other homes might lack that type of support.

“Smaller, more balanced homework means all of our kids are closer to a level playing field,” Jenkins said.

Member Christopher Garth cautioned that going too far with scaling back homework could be detrimental to the “flipped classroom” model, which emphasizes more learning outside of the classroom. He did agree, however, that there is a difference between “good” and “bad” homework.

Member John Nunes said that some homework helps reinforce what students learned throughout the day, but doesn’t want to see students working for more than four hours on assignments at home. He added that there should be some homework over school vacation periods, but not large research projects.