You will offer the students to not write them 'absent' on their religion's biggest holidays but keep the schools open. Trump caps off four years of democratic backsliding by encouraging insurrection, Board makes right call by postponing hybrid learning, High school seniors catch nonprofit fever… and can’t seem to get better, The choice of Kamala Harris’s replacement shouldn’t belong to just Gavin Newsom, What losing in-class school has been like for studentsÂ, The Californian’s wish list for the new board of education, Biden’s the clear winner, yet Trump stubbornly won’t follow the correct procedure, The Official Student-Run Newspaper of California High School, © 2021 • Advertise • FLEX WordPress Theme by SNO • Log in, Schools shouldn’t close for religious holidays. Public school administrators have to consider numerous factors when deciding when class ought to be in session. Yes, I know, Jewish schools close on many religious holidays, but this is not for Jewish children attending public schools. 27: 43.55%: Voters: 62. If compelled to balance competing claims from all religious believers (and, for the sake of fairness, nonbelievers) with practical matters such as weather, national civic holidays, and children’s (and adults’) needs for days off, then the absurdity of interrupting education for religious holidays becomes immediately apparent. Because the Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue, there are no final or definitive answers. Should religious holidays be statutory ... on the day before Christmas, both of our children will be off school since all schools close for the Christmas or winter break ... it will be far more convenient to celebrate Christmas than Hanukkah since it is a statutory holiday and falls during a school break. By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent 20 April 2009 • 15:27 pm Two major Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, occur in the fall, and many students take a day off to observe them. It would be unfair for many non-Jewish students to have their learning interrupted. If you think I should choose, "Yes, Schools SHOULD promote religious holidays" you must give me three *reasons* why. As religious diversity expands, so will the school calendar dilemma. Public schools should not close or reschedule activities solely because of conflicts between the school calendar and religious holidays. Perhaps my alma mater provided one of those inadvertent useful lessons that parochial schools sometimes do: let religious institutions close their doors on whatever supposedly holy days they want and, conversely, let nonreligious institutions, which is what public schools are, or should be, close for civic holidays like Presidents’ Day (as well as snow days) and stay out of the religion business altogether. For many districts, these holidays come  shortly after the first day of school. Perhaps it is unfair to have purportedly nondenominational breaks, like many winter and summer recesses, coinciding with Christian holidays such as Christmas and Easter without similarly accommodating Jews, Muslims, atheists and all other non-Christians, and disregarding all other practical considerations to make sure doors stay closed on a growing number of religious holidays is no solution. What about the many, many more city students who do not observe Eid-al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha? Angela Deanne Paloma is excited to spend her senior year and her second year in the Californian as a News Editor. Religious Holidays in 8 the Public Schools 108 Tips for Planning Religious Holidays in Public Schools Before planning a religious holiday activity in a public school, ask the following questions: 1. Should schools close for Eid holidays? 2021 Religious Holidays Service. Public schools should not close for any religious reasons. “[There is] no reason non-Jews should interrupt their learning so a tiny minority of Jewish students can go to synagogue,” wrote Mark Oppenheimer, editor for the online Jewish magazine Tablet. It is bad enough that government decides which days are important enough in Christianity to close. The argument that winter break is Christian cannot be made because many cultural holidays also take place during this time, such as Kwanzaa and, in some years, Hanukkah.Â, By definition, public schools are funded and operated by the government, which is constitutionally restricted from establishing a religion in America.Â. According to Haynes, many schools close on religious holidays because they may not function properly on those days if many students and teachers choose to take the day off. That's not the case in New York City. It also has six minimum days, excluding finals week. How does this activity serve the academic goals of the course, or the Would Darwin Day (on or around February 12) or the National Day of Reason (the first Thursday in May) then get added to the holiday calendar? I’ll end on a personal note. This would be my choice. However, schools may consider closing when large numbers of student and teacher absences are anticipated. Equity was “the big concern here,” insisted a union representative. “While the operational impact of some holidays may not rise to the level of requiring us to close school, we do respect the rights of students and staff to celebrate those holidays.” But Arriaga said school officials should be teaching students about the value of religious diversity, not shunning it like something that is harmful. After Boston, Massachusetts, endured its snowiest winter on record, and thus an unusually high number of snow days, the nearby town of Easton decided to hold classes on Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Good Friday rather than extend the school year even later into summer. Perhaps not irrelevantly, after a federal judge in 2012 ruled that a prayer mural at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, the student on behalf of whom the American Civil Liberties Union had sued became the target of derision from local lawmakers and received violent threats. In most public schools around the U.S., classes are cancelled for Christian holidays like Christmas and Good Friday, while students of other faiths have to choose between going to class and celebrating their own holy days. Students in such classes are expected to keep up regardless of other extracurriculars or absences.Â, Students who take time off school for the sake of religious holidays should not hope the system conforms to fit all of their needs.Â, Additionally, districts may not meet the government-mandated amount of school days if they have to close school for a few students to celebrate religious holidays.Â. A school has refused to let its Muslim pupils take today off to celebrate Eid al-Adha, saying they should mark the religious holiday tomorrow instead. Part of this was simply because of the numbers, with nearly 1.1 million of their schoolchildren being Muslim and their and other numbers continuing to grow across the nation with not only Islam, but other religions too. "If you close the schools for every single holiday," he argued, "there won't be any school." Addressing the dispute begins with understanding how religious holidays end up on public school calendars. We will add new religions very soon. Certainly, having schools involved in assessing which holidays require attending religious services and prohibit work (and thus can be taken off by the observant) and which others do not, as happened in Cranston, is not a viable way to run a public school system, and neither is closing on more and more days as certain religious groups increase their population shares in certain places, as happened in New York City. And while that's going on all morals are going down the drain. In March 2015, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that, starting the following year, public school students would get days off to observe two Islamic holidays. Around the same time de Blasio flaunted his “respect for one of the great faiths of this earth,” teachers in Cranston, Rhode Island, complained that respect for one religion amounted to disrespect for another. After all, that’s the only practical way to treat various religions equitably and with the respect they deserve. Consider a few episodes that tip the scale of schedule-setting toward the nonsensical. “Many, many city students celebrate Eid-al Fitr at the end of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha at the end of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.” Yet if raw demographic calculations like this determine when students receive instruction, then what if it were demonstrated that there were more nonbelievers than Muslims in New York? But they can close on a religious holiday if they expect a large percentage of students and staff to be absent, ... said the decision to close schools isn't a contest between religions. Some schools don’t even distinguish Christmas as a holiday. The starting point for deciding if and when public schools should close on a religious holiday is the First Amendment. Schools should still take great care in creating their schedules. If schools close for religious observance, the flow of student instruction would be disrupted early on. Though the First Amendment blocks government bodies from promoting religion, faith-based holidays often have secular impacts that can be taken into account. Schools with larger Jewish populations may have a stronger case, but there are also various religions and cultures in America with their own holidays. Even so, this is hardly the sole consideration or shouldn’t be anyway.). Adding days off for religious holidays, many of which occur in the fall, would make the first semester even shorter and the second semester longer because these days would have to be added somewhere. 2. “It is unconstitutional for public schools and their employees to observe religious holidays,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) states on its website. We provide religious holidays for the year 2020, 2021 and beyond lessons taught that day official! Excluding finals week schools open instructional calendar separation of church and state remains one of the core elements of government... Religious holiday is the First day of school. down should schools close for religious holidays drain religions. Religion into the mix of considerations and rational planning becomes impossible recognition religious. Close the schools for any religion 's holiday of thinking, is respecting.... €“ summer, fall, winter, spring week holidays Christian holiday where there is already favored... 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