From 8:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Friday, October 24, families flooded campus, accompanying their students through hallways and stairwells, before they attended a packed schedule of parent-teacher meetings which took place that afternoon and the following morning. Students value this brief time of year for its short classes and no-homework long weekend. For parents and faculty, on the other hand, this three-day stretch is the only built-in, in-person opportunity to meet with each other, put faces to names, and hear about students’ lives outside of letter grades and report card comments. However, a significant change marked this year’s meetings: family members could once again meet with all, instead of a few, of their child’s teachers.
For the past two years, the school administration limited parent meetings to two teachers in 2023 and three in 2024. The 2025 schedule reverted to Milton’s earlier model, allowing parents to sign up for as many conferences as available slots permitted. The change aimed to make teacher interactions more accessible, even though it also meant fuller days for faculty. The prior scheduling limits, English Teacher Eric Idsvoog explained, emerged “out of…a good concern with fairness.” Back then, the opportunity to meet with an unlimited number of teachers came with a challenge. English Teacher Kate Hamblet described that “as a result of some people having five to six meetings, others [did not] have the opportunity to meet with more teachers.” Idsvoog said that the change to a limited number of meetings “[made] space for families who might not be able to instantly jump on the internet when signups become available to still be able to get meetings.” However, Idsvoog explained that as a result of parent dissatisfaction with “only being able to sign up for a certain number of teacher meetings,” the administration reversed the regulation to allow as many meetings as the parents would like.
“In the last few years, restricting us to two or three teacher meetings felt limiting,” said parent Josh Payne. “It made it way harder to get the full picture of my daughter’s academic life.”
This year’s scheduling change reflected a step towards greater inclusivity but also revealed the limits of the schedule itself. Logistical imperfections remain: because meetings are scheduled on a first-come, first-serve basis, the expanded system primarily benefited families who registered earliest. Further, as History Teacher Joshua Furst noted, “There are not enough meetings for every teacher to meet with all [of their students’ parents].” Lukas Caggiano ‘26 noted that his “parents had a hard time getting time slots to meet with teachers.” Hamblet added that the system this year meant that teachers had extremely packed schedules. She, for example, “never had a conference day when every slot wasn’t full.”
As Milton continues to tweak Family Weekend, balancing the number of available meetings with the quality of communication remains an ongoing challenge. “I just really do love it when it feels like me, my parents, and my teachers are all on the same team,” said Talia Coval ‘27.
Furst explained, “if you have a student who is facing particular challenges or is facing disciplinary issues or there is stuff that we’re very critical of, it is difficult to put that in writing without a context and tone.” Hamblet agreed, saying that these face-to-face discussions are crucial because they provide space for tone and empathy that can get lost in comments. “Hearing parents speak about their children is tremendously powerful and you don’t get that from the comments,” she said.
Academic Dean Heather Sugrue and Manager of Events Cory Butler were not able to provide a comment on the change by press time.