Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
That's not a threshold. What threshold do you want? >20%? OK, let's say that if >20% of students or teachers are out, then the schools should close. Otherwise, the schools should stay open.
For which of these current MCPS closures would >20% of students or teachers be out, if there were school (in calendar-year order)?
Rosh Hashanah
Yom Kippur
Good Friday
Easter Monday
All of them
Let's examine those assumptions.
For the first two -- the MCPS student population is currently 37% white. Let's assume, for the purpose of calculation, that all Jews in Montgomery County, who are observant enough to stay home for the High Holy Days, are white. (I know that's not true, but it's close enough to true for this purpose.) In that case, at least 54% of white students (more than half) in MCPS would have to be Jews observant enough to stay out of school on the High Holy Days. Do you think that's accurate?
For the next two -- well, as far as I know, I've met one person in my whole life who didn't work/go to school/teach on Western Good Friday (she was Episcopalian). And I've never met anybody who didn't work/go to school/teach on Western Easter Monday, which for Western Christianity is just the day after Western Easter. So although I only have my own anecdotes to go on, I find it very very very very very hard to believe that 1 in 5 students (or teachers) in Montgomery County would stay home on either of those days, and especially on Easter Monday.