If you want a picture to show with your comment, go get a gravatar. Schools should still take great care in creating their schedules. 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. Though the First Amendment blocks government bodies from promoting religion, faith-based holidays often have secular impacts that can be taken into account. I’ll end on a personal note. Angela Deanne Paloma, Co News Editor|November 19, 2019, Public schools should not close for any religious reasons.Â. As … "If you close the schools for every single holiday," he argued, "there won't be any school." No, what matters, in this line of thinking, is respecting religion. You will not close the schools for any religion's holiday. Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha, which is like a Muslim Christmas celebrated between the end of summer  to the beginning of fall. 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. 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. Angela Deanne Paloma is excited to spend her senior year and her second year in the Californian as a News Editor. In many school systems, these have long … I need help with homework that's due tomorrow, and I need to decide whether schools should promote religious holidays; why or why not? “It is unconstitutional for public schools and their employees to observe religious holidays,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) states on its website. If you think I should choose, "No, Schools SHOULDN't promote religious holidays" you must give me *three reasons* why. Of course, kerfuffles over holding school on religious holidays really reveal conniving liberals’ antireligious schemes—at least in the view of certain Fox-News types. Yes, I know, Jewish schools close on many religious holidays, but this is not for Jewish children attending public schools. 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. As an extension of our government, public schools should also be separated from religion and not close for religious holidays. 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? Evidently, the separation of church and state remains one of the core elements of our country. The government could, perhaps, have official “seasonal” holidays – summer, fall, winter, spring week holidays. Schools are not required to close on a particular religious holiday but may choose to do so as a matter of administrative convenience as, for example, when large numbers of students are likely to be absent. It is bad enough that government decides which days are important enough in Christianity to close. What about the many, many more city students who do not observe Eid-al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha? Equity was “the big concern here,” insisted a union representative. Public schools should not close or reschedule activities solely because of conflicts between the school calendar and religious holidays. If schools close for religious observance, the flow of student instruction would be disrupted early on. Should schools close for major religious holidays? 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. 2. Government schools close for those days, but not for days of importance to Jews. Some schools don’t even distinguish Christmas as a holiday. 27: 43.55%: Voters: 62. With respect to personal religious holidays, employees and students at public schools, could have say 5-10 additional excused absences for religious holidays. Two major Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, occur in the fall, and many students take a day off to observe them.     For example, AP classes typically only have until the end of April to teach a higher volume of content in order to prepare students for AP exams. Public schools should not close for any religious reasons. Two councils have instructed all schools under their control to shut for the annual … This would be my choice. Equity for some more than others seems to be the policy. If you think I should choose, "Yes, Schools SHOULD promote religious holidays" you must give me three *reasons* why. 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. We currently provide Christian, Muslim Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist religious holidays. Public schools should not close or reschedule activities solely because of conflicts between the school calendar and religious holidays. Religious Holidays and Public Schools: A Brief Legal Analysis Although many controversies have arisen over religious holidays in public schools, the case law is scant. View Poll Results: Should Public Schools be closed on religious holidays? As a non-Catholic who did time at a Catholic school, I recall no consideration of days off for non-Christian religious holidays. However, schools may consider closing when large numbers of student and teacher absences are anticipated. San Francisco public schools do not list Christmas as a school holiday on their 2019-2020 academic calendar, according to San Francisco Unified School District’s website.Â, In America, Christmas is no longer exclusively religious and is actually a federal holiday. 2. But the only Christian holiday where there is no school is Christmas, according to the district’s instructional calendar. “[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. 2021 Religious Holidays Service. Should schools close for Eid holidays? Schools across the country are faced with increasing demand for days off for religious holidays by Hindus, Muslims and other faiths. The ADL is a global anti-hate organization known for their goal to fight anti-Semitism. Because of the district’s mid-August start date, the first semester also has only 85 days, 10 fewer than the second semester. Â. “The Muslim faith is one of the fastest growing in this city and in this nation,” de Blasio explained. At the time, the school committee wanted the mural addressed to “Our Heavenly Father” to remain in place, according to the teachers’ union. 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. Constant breaks from school would especially affect those taking more advanced classes. As religious minorities increase in the United States, some want public schools to close not only on Christmas, but also on their religious holidays. What about other groups who claim their beliefs require this or that day off? The school committee had agreed in June 2014 to hold classes on Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Good Friday, but after 2015’s bad Good Friday, the teachers’ union wanted the religious holidays reinstated. To enter, students must write a 800- to 1,200-word essay in response to this prompt: “In most public high schools, certain days are marked as religious holidays on … In New York, schools close for major Jewish holidays, and as of 2015, two days are given for Muslims to observe Eid. For many districts, these holidays come  shortly after the first day of school. You can certainly see an inoperable school system if they did honor all the other religions with school shutdowns on their respective religious holidays. Muslims are divided (RNS) Two petitions urging the federal government to close schools on the two Eid holidays sparked spirited debate in … That's not the case in New York City. 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. How does this activity serve the academic goals of the course, or the There are not many opportunities to make up the time that schools would lose for valuable instruction, especially at the beginning of the school year.Â. Row over school closures for Muslim, Hindu and Sikh holidays . When schools choose not to close on particular holidays, conflicts may arise. 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. Most public schools close for some days of importance to Christians, but not others. Many parents and students nationwide have been asking districts to close public schools on major religious holidays to allow kids to celebrate without worrying about schoolwork. “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? 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. The high court has ruled, however, that the government may not erect an explicitly Many parents and students nationwide have been asking districts to close public schools on major religious holidays to allow kids to celebrate without worrying about schoolwork. As religious diversity expands, so will the school calendar dilemma. get days off to observe two Islamic holidays, prayer mural at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, Representative Sean Duffy of Wisconsin spied a secularist plot, A Meditation: We Must Grow Past our Inabilities to Learn from History or Accept the Value of Science, Reader Opinion: Let’s Study Science Before Theology, The AHA Adopts Four New Resolutions in 2020, Offering a Humanist Hand to Asylum Seekers, Trolling and Controlling: Harming Trans Athletes Is Not a Humanist Sport. It would be unfair for many non-Jewish students to have their learning interrupted. There should be no official government recognition of religious holidays. Addressing the dispute begins with understanding how religious holidays end up on public school calendars. 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. The starting point for deciding if and when public schools should close on a religious holiday is the First Amendment. Yes, but only in areas with large religious minority 14: 22.58%: No, only for Christian (Federal/State) holidays 21: 33.87%: No, keep schools open on ALL religious holidays! By Martin Beckford, Religious Affairs Correspondent 20 April 2009 • 15:27 pm Public schools with small Jewish populations cannot afford to halt everybody’s learning to accommodate a small demographic. 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. Where does it end? Even so, this is hardly the sole consideration or shouldn’t be anyway.). Federal and state laws prohibit schools from penalizing students for missing school on religious holidays. Teachers’ requests to observe the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah the previous fall were approved by the city’s school department, but teachers were not allowed to take off the Christian holiday of Good Friday, according to the Cranston Teachers’ Alliance. After a long summer break, teachers and students need time to get used to being in school again, and the early closing of schools would not help.Â, Excluding Thanksgiving and holiday breaks, Cal High already has four days of no school during the first semester. Many would argue that there is already a favored religion in the public school system: Christianity. We will add new religions very soon. “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. Consider a few episodes that tip the scale of schedule-setting toward the nonsensical. Add religion into the mix of considerations and rational planning becomes impossible. (It might bear mentioning that Cranston’s population is predominantly Christian and only about 3 percent Jewish. You will offer the students to not write them 'absent' on their religion's biggest holidays but keep the schools open. Because the Supreme Court has not ruled on the issue, there are no final or definitive answers. 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