The official announcement by de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina came four hours later at PS/IS 30 in Brooklyn, where officials said 36 percent of students were absent the last time Eid al-Adha fell on a school day, according to WCBS.... Official estimates of the number of Muslims living in New York City vary from 600,000 to 1 million, with Columbia University estimating that 95 percent of Muslim children attended the city’s public schools in 2008, composing 10 percent of the public education population.So, 90% of the children are not Muslims, but nearly four in ten didn't bother to come on Eid al-Adha?
New York City Schools to Close for Muslim Holidays
That's interesting.
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I think they're talking about 1 school where 36% didn't show up, not the whole city.
That would make more sense. So they have one school where Muslims of school age are a huge percentage of the district.
My public schools, K-12, were in neighborhoods with an unusually high percentage of Jewish families. Not a majority, but quite a high number. Though we didn't officially close down for Jewish holidays, the school tended to be pretty empty on those days and not much got done. Never caused any problems. A school is for the students; I don't see any reason why it shouldn't accommodate their priorities as long as the work gets done over the course of the semester.
For that matter, no important business, from depositions to hearings, gets scheduled in any bankruptcy court that I've ever been involved in, all over the country, on a Jewish holiday.
That's a recognition of a very high percentage of people whose habits are being given a reasonable accommodation. It won't work for every 1-3% splinter group. Not that I'd have any trouble with their absence of school on those days, but there's no need for everyone else to shut down, too.
Are any Christian holidays on the calendar? There is no more Christmas break is there? It's winter break and simply separates one semester from another, right? Or am I assuming secularism has gone farther than it really has?
The weird thing was that we said the Lord's Prayer every morning in unison--in a public school. Can you imagine the furor if anyone tried that today? Apparently we were all expected to accommodate everyone else's religion. And yet the sky did not fall.
We never had religious displays at school of any kind, but we did say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning. These days, I think even that wouldn't fly in a lot of places.
Heck, here in Cali, I'm just happy the kids all say it once a week at assembly. Our schools have a number of 'teacher development' days that are vaguely referred to as 'pupil free days'. Schools where there are a high number of people who are going to be observing a holiday- be they of whatever religion, tend to schedule some of these days on those same holidays, so in highly Jewish areas, you're likely to have Yom Kippur off for instance, as a 'pupil free day'. Seems to work just fine. If the holiday is being named 'Eid al Adha' I have a big problem with it. Christians in NYC should start a campaign to have Good Friday off then.
Some public schools would be improved, in both function and honesty, by converting to 100% teacher-development and pupil-free days.
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