Why did FCPS screw up on Diwali?
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Anonymous
Yes, let's have school on Christmas Day. Bring it on. Oh wait, we should have that one off? Majority rules, I guess. Hope you aren't ever in the minority. (And I celebrate Christmas.) |
Anonymous
i "No other country does this" does what?? Shut down for religious holidays? There are many countries that celebrate multiple religious holidays as government holidays, even if it's not the majority religion! Shocker! |
Anonymous
Yes same here - I’m actually celebrating it tomorrow not today |
Anonymous
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Wow. If you kid has a holiday to celebrate, they take the day and are allowed to make up any missed assignments.
Save the outrage for having FCPS do a better job of educating your child. |
Anonymous
I would not be confused, I would chalk it up to the government being the government and move along. The irony here is FCPS grasping to virtue signal inclusivity by trying to tie an ethnic holiday to an FCPS day off, but instead creating confusion and doing a disservice to an ethnic group. |
Anonymous
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I think it must be the reason a PP posted - it’s a lunar holiday and the date shifted from when the school board set the calendar - remember they set like three years at once last time to give predictably.
I think it’s good they did not change it. We cannot go around constantly changing the date of these lunar holidays. When they changed for Eid in spring the other year it was chaos. And plz for the love of god would PPs stop asking “why don’t we go to school on Xmas?” The vast vast majority of the county celebrates Xmas and it would be logistically impossible to run the school system on Xmas. Plus remaining open the surrounding days too would guarantee they could not staff our schools since no teachers would want to work then considering everywhere else in the country has some type of December winter break off built around Xmas. In other countries where the majority celebration is Diwali or Eid or Lunar new year the schedules reflect that since it impacts the vast majority of the population. |
Anonymous
The right answer^ |
Anonymous
| For the record, Catholics always offer a wide range of times to attend mass. That is the only obligation. There’s an evening vigil on the 31st and there are at least four masses today at most local churches. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
The worst part is the newsletters detailing all the religious holidays!! The last thing I want is the school system sending me religion. It is bizarre. |
Anonymous
It’s DEI overreach, which is why you are seeing the pullback on DEI. |
Anonymous
Yes, actually, it's a federal holiday that many people celebrate secularly. The schools can't help that. If I were in a country that didn't recognize Christmas as a holiday, I would not expect them to close everything to accommodate my family. |
Anonymous
But it sure was nice to go this morning without working it around school. 
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Anonymous
I think the OP knows that the date shifted because it’s a lunar holiday - something tells me that the OP doesn’t even celebrate Diwali and just posted to stir everything up . . . |
Anonymous
It is one of the consequences left over from the last school board. The last school board decided that they wanted to recognize non Christian holidays in the FCPS calendar and schedule. If I am remembering correctly, the argument was that since Christmas was off due to it being a federal holiday and falling over winter break, that it was not equitable to non Christians (completely disregarding that even it was not over break, FCPS could not hold classes on Christmas because absences would be extraordinarily high due to nearly all of the FCPS families pulling their kids from school Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and likely through New Years eve.) The district formed an ecumenical committee of representatives from various faiths: Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Christian, etc. The committee studied attendance patterns of the district on religious holidays, and came up with a fairly short list of non-Christian holidays where.the attendance could justify offering a day off school, or a half day. I believe the short list hit 3, maybe 4 major holidays, such as Diwali, Eid, and I think either Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashanah (it was one of the two). The list was fair, and based off staff and student attendance. The school board got the list and completely ignored the committee work, like they always do. They decided it was not equitable, and then added a ton of additional religious and cultural holidays, giving days off for some and saying that schools could not give tests, assign homework, learn new material have games, concerts, or anything substantive on any of the days. They added days like Day of the Dead and Orthodox Christmas to the list. They would acknowledge some holidays but ignored others on the same day. For example, they sent out weekly email recognitions celebrating Ramadan, but did not mention Passover, Lent, Ash Wednesday, or Easter occuring at the same time. Or they recognize Day of the Dead on November 1st, but did not mention All Saints Day. It became something well intentioned that morphed into a huge, virtue signalling mess that disrupted learning. By taking sides and picking more obscure religious holidays just to be inclusive, instead of the attendance stats based holiday list from the ecumenical committee, FCPS overloaded the calendar with inconvenient days off, pushed the end of the year to mid June instead of early June, and created a scheduling mess for everyone. The peak of idiocy came a couple years ago. The students wend from late September through I think late January with only 4 or 5 uninterrupted full weeks of classes. Every other week was 3 or 4 days, with a few 2 day weeks broken up like Monday school, Tuesday and Wednesday off, Thursday school with no new material, tests or games, Fridsy school. Then, the school board picked the wrong day for Eid. It happened to be an AP exam date, so FCPS withdrew all students from the AP exams for that day. Then, around 3 weeks out, they realized they had the wrong day, so FCPS withdrew all FCPS students for a 2nd day of AP testing and told them they could not test on either day, the real Eid date or the wrong Eid date. After an uproar from parents, students and teachers, including muslim families, FCPS allowed students to take the AP test on actual Eid, but still did not allow them to take AP exams on wrong Eid. It was a mess, all because of FCPS school board once again over riding recommendations from a committee they created that did not give them the result they wanted. It is still a mess, but at least the kids appear to be able to learn new material on the religious holidays. |