Burlington, VT school district cancels Halloween festivities over "inclusion" concerns

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Burlington School District officials are canceling Halloween celebrations in the classroom in addition to a parade at Edmunds Elementary School.

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This year, It started with an email from a parent and ended with school staff voting to cancel the Halloween parade at Edmunds Elementary School in Burlington.

They say the decision was made from both a safety perspective as well as concerns that the celebrations couldn't be inclusive. "For example, many people are made uncomfortable by the notion that you change your identity, you turn into someone else and those somebody else's could represent cultural appropriations," said the district's Miriam Ehtesham-Cating

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In addition to the possibility of cultural appropriation, they cite families who are financially insecure and the fact that costumes can represent death and gore.

"It's not that we are teaching Halloween is a bad thing, it's that we are reflecting in our practices that we believe every celebration held in schools should be fully inclusive... there's a huge difference," said Ehtesham-Cating.

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