Ah, diversity
Just looked at the school calendar for 2024-2025. The calendar reflects the wonderful diversity that is Long Island.
Our public schools start their year right after Labor Day and end their year in June. They close for all the usual holidays, like Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, etc. Of course they have a winter break at Christmas and a spring break at Easter. They also take a week-long break for Presidents Day.
And our public schools have always closed in observance of three Jewish holidays — Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Passover. The size of the Jewish community and expected absenteeism if the schools remained open …
Well, now the schools close for the Lunar New Year (what we used to call Chinese New Year) in January/February. They close for a couple of Muslim Eids (the Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar, so the dates of the holidays always change). And now they close for the Hindu festival of Diwali, which is also a fall festival.
This year Diwali will be celebrated on Friday November 1.
Which means Halloween is going to be absolutely crazy.
Diwali isn't the one with the colored powder, is it?
ReplyDeleteNo, that’s Holi. A spring holiday.
DeleteOur ethnic composition where I live in New York State has changed in the almost 40 years I've lived here, but we are still primarily non Hispanic white in our village. I'm a little surprised the only changes (I just looked) by our school district are the addition of Juneteenth (a Federal holiday, of course) and Asian Lunar New Year, which the state added. We never have gotten Jewish holidays off.
ReplyDeleteOh wow. That's a lot of holidays.
ReplyDeleteYeah, but we still manage to meet the state requirement of 180 teaching days
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