The deadline for submitting community petitions in favor of keeping religious opening exercises in Hanover Schools has been extended yet again.

Early last month, The school board voted to extend the final petition submission date from April 30th to June 19th, acknowledging that the COVID-19 pandemic would make collecting the necessary 60 parental signatures per school a difficult task.

Now, for much the same reasons, Chair Rick Peters says the board has decided to push the deadline further still.

“The decision was an easy one,” states Peters. “We had a letter from the Minister of Education suggesting that, given the circumstances, we move our deadline to July 31st and we had no issues doing that.”

Peters says around 10 schools have already submitted their petitions and he expects this new deadline will give ample time for those who have not.