The six Democratic candidates, plus Independence Party favorite Adolfo Carrion, all said that as mayor they would add two Muslim holidays as days off on the public school calendar.
The City Council passed a resolution in favor of adding the days, Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha, but Mayor Bloomberg balked saying there was no room for more time off.
There are many children from families of the Muslim faith in the school system these days.
There are teachers who are Muslim as well.
If Good Friday and Passover and Yom Kippur are days off, then Id al-Fitr and Id al-Adha should be days off too.
The mayor (soon to be gone) should stop balking because he assigned too many days for test prep.
ReplyDeleteLet's take two or three days from those test prep days, which are worthless and meaningless, and use them as Muslim Holidays.
Agreed!
DeleteThis is good news.
ReplyDeleteYou can add Christmas to those sanctioned holidays in our supposedly church-state separated society.
(I just looked those particular Muslim holidays. Id-al Fitr is due to fall during summer school this year and next.)
Good point about Christmas - see, even in my head it's "normalized" as a day off!
DeleteIf we get these days "off" they will simply be added in somewhere else in the school calender. (Two more days added at the end of the school calender perhaps.) The State mandates a certain amount of school days. Unless NY State changes the minimal amount of days, there is not much a new mayor can do in regard to this.
ReplyDeleteWe're already well over 180 school days. This year we were at 186 or 187.
DeleteIts not fair why do we have school in Eid-ul-adha!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI WANT NO SCHOOL ON EID-UL-ADHA
Why do Christian and Jewish ext... people get off on there holidays.
Plz help us!!!!!!!!!