HoCo Among 10 School Districts Statewide Recognizing Religious Holidays by Name

By Stephen Waldron, CAPITAL NEWS SERVICE

This school year, more than half of Maryland’s 24 school systems will not recognize any religious holidays—such as Christmas and Rosh Hashanah—by name. The 14 include every school system on the Eastern Shore and five others around the state.

These districts instead use secular terms, like “Winter Holiday” or ”Spring Break,” to describe the school closings. Tracy Sahler is a member of the calendar committee for Wicomico County Public Schools, and has worked with the school system for 16 years. She said the district has kept the names of religious holidays out of its calendar for as long as she can remember.

She said the district refers to school closings around Christmas as “Winter Holidays” because they happen to occur in winter. “They’re not religious holiday breaks,” Sahler said. “They are breaks from school.”

The 10 districts that will recognize religious holidays by name during this school year include Howard, Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.

The issue of using religious names for school holidays received increased attention recently when Montgomery County’s Board of Education voted to remove all references to religious holidays from its 2015-2016 calendar after Muslim community members called for the board to recognize Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.

At a Howard County Board of Education meeting this week, a Muslim leader requested that Eid al-Adha be listed on the school calendar, as it falls on the same day as Yom Kippur; and Asian representatives asked that the Lunar New Year be recognized and scheduled as a professional development day so students would be off, according to The Washington Post.

Related: Religious References Stricken from Montgomery County School Calendar

None of Maryland’s school districts has a policy of closing on Muslim holidays, but some have closed on some Muslim holidays when they happened to fall on the same day as a Jewish holiday.

The Howard County Chinese Parents Group pitched the idea of scheduling a teacher development day on Feb. 8 to the 2015–2016 Howard County Academic Calendar Planning Committee, a move the committee stated it supported in a report submitted this week. The Chinese group has also created a petition for the cause on Change.org that had 745 supporters as of Friday afternoon.

Of the 10 school systems recognizing religious holidays by name this school year, six include both Christian and Jewish holidays.

Anne Arundel County Public Schools began recognizing and closing for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur roughly a decade ago. Teresa Tudor, chairwoman of the calendar committee for Anne Arundel County Public Schools, said the decision came down to student absence rates.

“There was a push among parents and students who were Jewish, and we were at a point where our data supported closing,” Tudor said.

Howard County began closing on these Jewish holidays in 1979 because the amount of absences affected instruction and participation in the classroom, according to The Washington Post.

The Howard County Board of Education will vote on th 2015–2016 academic calendar at its Jan. 15 meeting.

Pictured, the 2013 Lunar New Year celebration in the George Howard Building in Ellicott City. Screenshot from Ken Ulman/YouTube.

Patch editor Elizabeth Janney contributed to this article.