Why did FCPS screw up on Diwali?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait... isn't Diwali 5 days from 30 Oct to 3 Nov? And isn't the 3rd day (1 Nov) the most significant day when most celebrations take place? If so, then FCPS got it right. If not, then FCPS got it right for a nice 4-day weekend.

No. Diwali isn’t five days long.

Well, I am not Hindu, but Google says otherwise. Many sites say that it is a "5 day Hindu festival of lights."

Please stop acting like you know a religion because you found something on Google.

Strange response. I never claimed to know anything about Hinduism or Diwali. But if you are more informed and know Diwali is not a 5-day festival of lights, then you should call Google and have them correct their links.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait... isn't Diwali 5 days from 30 Oct to 3 Nov? And isn't the 3rd day (1 Nov) the most significant day when most celebrations take place? If so, then FCPS got it right. If not, then FCPS got it right for a nice 4-day weekend.

No. Diwali isn’t five days long.

Hindu here - Diwali itself is one day, but there is in fact a number of pujas/holy days surrounding it - but a lot of this is based on where in India your family is from. White people don't understand just how ancient Hinduism is and that it is therefore very regionalized.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be off on religious holidays in the first place. If your family celebrates a religious holiday your kid should be allowed to stay home that day with an excused absence. They should not close the whole school system down so you can celebrate.

What happened to the separation of church and state in America?! If I wanted that, I would have stayed in my own country, not immigrated here.

Why do all the schools close on basically every religious holiday?!

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.)

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.

There's plenty of people who have use or loose leave at the end of the year, some companies close for that week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait... isn't Diwali 5 days from 30 Oct to 3 Nov? And isn't the 3rd day (1 Nov) the most significant day when most celebrations take place? If so, then FCPS got it right. If not, then FCPS got it right for a nice 4-day weekend.

No. Diwali isn’t five days long.

Well, I am not Hindu, but Google says otherwise. Many sites say that it is a "5 day Hindu festival of lights."

Please stop acting like you know a religion because you found something on Google.

Strange response. I never claimed to know anything about Hinduism or Diwali. But if you are more informed and know Diwali is not a 5-day festival of lights, then you should call Google and have them correct their links.

“Call Google”!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait... isn't Diwali 5 days from 30 Oct to 3 Nov? And isn't the 3rd day (1 Nov) the most significant day when most celebrations take place? If so, then FCPS got it right. If not, then FCPS got it right for a nice 4-day weekend.

No. Diwali isn’t five days long.

Hindu here - Diwali itself is one day, but there is in fact a number of pujas/holy days surrounding it - but a lot of this is based on where in India your family is from. White people don't understand just how ancient Hinduism is and that it is therefore very regionalized.

All true. And supports that fcps screwed up, no matter what the non-Hindu Google expert argues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You're all completely missing the point because you're so scared of other races and religions. The point was why did FCPS say that tomorrow is Diwali when today is Diwali?

I don’t know OP. It’s possible the timing of Diwali changed at some point, because I originally had Nov 1st marked as Diwali on my calendar, and only realized a few weeks ago that it’s actually Oct 31st. I think lunar calendar based holidays sometimes change.

My iPhone shows Diwali on Nov 1st. --NP

[Anonymous]

• Schools can close for religious holidays if there is a secular, non-religious reason.
• Justifications include significant anticipated absences disrupting operations.
• Closures ensure the maintenance of educational standards and reduce administrative burdens.
• Must comply with the First Amendment, avoiding endorsement of any religion.
• Community feedback and past attendance data can influence decisions.
• Primary reason for closure must be practical and operational, not religious.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be off on religious holidays in the first place. If your family celebrates a religious holiday your kid should be allowed to stay home that day with an excused absence. They should not close the whole school system down so you can celebrate.

What happened to the separation of church and state in America?! If I wanted that, I would have stayed in my own country, not immigrated here.

Why do all the schools close on basically every religious holiday?!

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.

That’s not quite right. The committee picked the days for clearly religious reasons. The data did not actually show a significant jump on those days that suggested an operational need to close.

They first tried to side step closures with the O day approach and added more because a few board members pointed out (in trying to illustrate that we can’t cover every blessed holiday) that other days were left out when just the 4 were cherry picked. O days were a mess initially when they had the no new content rule but better after they removed that.

The SB and FCPS still felt like they needed to hand out this favor to those religious groups that had been lobbying so hard for the days off so they went ahead and did it anyway.

Legally, FCPS playing with fire for this policy. By cherry-picking which holidays to honor, they risk being accused of favoring religion. Throw missed AP exams and you’ve got potential complaints about impacting students’ rights to education.

All it takes is one complaint to the office of civil rights from a student who was harmed by this policy and the school board will have another crisis on their hands.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be off on religious holidays in the first place. If your family celebrates a religious holiday your kid should be allowed to stay home that day with an excused absence. They should not close the whole school system down so you can celebrate.

What happened to the separation of church and state in America?! If I wanted that, I would have stayed in my own country, not immigrated here.

Why do all the schools close on basically every religious holiday?!

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.

That’s not quite right. The committee picked the days for clearly religious reasons. The data did not actually show a significant jump on those days that suggested an operational need to close.

They first tried to side step closures with the O day approach and added more because a few board members pointed out (in trying to illustrate that we can’t cover every blessed holiday) that other days were left out when just the 4 were cherry picked. O days were a mess initially when they had the no new content rule but better after they removed that.

The SB and FCPS still felt like they needed to hand out this favor to those religious groups that had been lobbying so hard for the days off so they went ahead and did it anyway.

Legally, FCPS playing with fire for this policy. By cherry-picking which holidays to honor, they risk being accused of favoring religion. Throw missed AP exams and you’ve got potential complaints about impacting students’ rights to education.

All it takes is one complaint to the office of civil rights from a student who was harmed by this policy and the school board will have another crisis on their hands.

Thanks Matlock. Now sit down please. Once again, FCPS has been off for Diwali in the past. In 2022, school was closed on October 24. I don’t recall any major lawsuits or crises about this.

Such drama queens!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools should not be off on religious holidays in the first place. If your family celebrates a religious holiday your kid should be allowed to stay home that day with an excused absence. They should not close the whole school system down so you can celebrate.

What happened to the separation of church and state in America?! If I wanted that, I would have stayed in my own country, not immigrated here.

Why do all the schools close on basically every religious holiday?!

Yes let's please stop pinning spring break to easter and winter break to Christmas and instead tie them to quarter end. Thank you!!!

Spring break is pinned to the spring breaks for surrounding school districts.

FCPS tried separating it from Easter recently, and it was a disaster. Many teachers have kids in other districts and changing spring break created staffing and childcare issues galore.

I don't know why we can't do things the way that universities and schools in most of the country do and tie fall and spring break to the end off the quarter. Not to mention winter break. So stupid. I am Hindu, I didn't even want Diwali off. I want my kids to have federal holidays off, and quarter breaks, the summer, and then I'm good.

Well this year we do have fall “break” at the end of the quarter. It fell nicely and we have a 5 day weekend.

Spring break - FCPS tried to move this to a better timing spot two years ago. The teachers who live outside Fairfax county flipped out and raised holy hell at the idea of not having spring break at the same time that their own kids would since other districts stayed married to the Easter week paring.

Many many families (including Christian ones) in FCPS would love them to put spring break at the end of the quarter and divorce it from Easter because travel costs would be lower. But unless FCPS can get Loudoun and Arlington to match us in moving it that way it’s stuck attached to Easter for now given staffing issues.

I agree that separating Easter from spring break would be better for practicing Christians. Holy Week is a somber, reverent time of fasting, sacrifice and religious reflection. It is not really a great time to be partying on the beach or running around Disneyworld.

But I understand working around teacher's schedules. It is unfortunate though that working with teachers schedules means tying spring break to Holy Week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: • Schools can close for religious holidays if there is a secular, non-religious reason.
• Justifications include significant anticipated absences disrupting operations.
• Closures ensure the maintenance of educational standards and reduce administrative burdens.
• Must comply with the First Amendment, avoiding endorsement of any religion.
• Community feedback and past attendance data can influence decisions.
• Primary reason for closure must be practical and operational, not religious.

So, just so I follow your argument.

FCPS can schedule their winter break and spring break around Christian holidays for "practical reasons", and every weekend around the Christian sabbath for "practical reasons". But if they give Diwali off that's "endorsing Hinduism" whatever that means?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wait... isn't Diwali 5 days from 30 Oct to 3 Nov? And isn't the 3rd day (1 Nov) the most significant day when most celebrations take place? If so, then FCPS got it right. If not, then FCPS got it right for a nice 4-day weekend.

No. Diwali isn’t five days long.

Well, I am not Hindu, but Google says otherwise. Many sites say that it is a "5 day Hindu festival of lights."

Please stop acting like you know a religion because you found something on Google.

Strange response. I never claimed to know anything about Hinduism or Diwali. But if you are more informed and know Diwali is not a 5-day festival of lights, then you should call Google and have them correct their links.

“Call Google”!!

I hope you realize that was sarcastic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: • Schools can close for religious holidays if there is a secular, non-religious reason.
• Justifications include significant anticipated absences disrupting operations.
• Closures ensure the maintenance of educational standards and reduce administrative burdens.
• Must comply with the First Amendment, avoiding endorsement of any religion.
• Community feedback and past attendance data can influence decisions.
• Primary reason for closure must be practical and operational, not religious.

So, just so I follow your argument.

FCPS can schedule their winter break and spring break around Christian holidays for "practical reasons", and every weekend around the Christian sabbath for "practical reasons". But if they give Diwali off that's "endorsing Hinduism" whatever that means?

This schools could not function if they (stupidly) tried to operate on Christmas.

Diwali? We went to school for dozens of years with no issues. There's no operational reason to take Diwali off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: • Schools can close for religious holidays if there is a secular, non-religious reason.
• Justifications include significant anticipated absences disrupting operations.
• Closures ensure the maintenance of educational standards and reduce administrative burdens.
• Must comply with the First Amendment, avoiding endorsement of any religion.
• Community feedback and past attendance data can influence decisions.
• Primary reason for closure must be practical and operational, not religious.

So, just so I follow your argument.

FCPS can schedule their winter break and spring break around Christian holidays for "practical reasons", and every weekend around the Christian sabbath for "practical reasons". But if they give Diwali off that's "endorsing Hinduism" whatever that means?

This schools could not function if they (stupidly) tried to operate on Christmas.

Diwali? We went to school for dozens of years with no issues. There's no operational reason to take Diwali off.

Over the past "dozens of years," our schools' Hindu and Sikh population, both students and staff, has grown exponentially. I used to have one or two students who celebrated Diwali, but now it is close to half my class most years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: • Schools can close for religious holidays if there is a secular, non-religious reason.
• Justifications include significant anticipated absences disrupting operations.
• Closures ensure the maintenance of educational standards and reduce administrative burdens.
• Must comply with the First Amendment, avoiding endorsement of any religion.
• Community feedback and past attendance data can influence decisions.
• Primary reason for closure must be practical and operational, not religious.

So, just so I follow your argument.

FCPS can schedule their winter break and spring break around Christian holidays for "practical reasons", and every weekend around the Christian sabbath for "practical reasons". But if they give Diwali off that's "endorsing Hinduism" whatever that means?

This schools could not function if they (stupidly) tried to operate on Christmas.

Diwali? We went to school for dozens of years with no issues. There's no operational reason to take Diwali off.

+1
If we were in India it would be a practical/operational necessity to close for Diwali due to the number of kids and staff that would be out. Likewise here for the vast majority that celebrate Xmas (even if they are not practicing christians as it has also become a cultural holiday) - you’d have virtually empty schools on a staffing and student size which is why we close then.

And good luck trying to change the weekend timing! Again, if we were in a majority Muslim country it would be Fri/Sat but here it’s evolved to be Sat/Sun. It’s not a conspiracy against you. It is simply the majority culture that drives what is operationally necessary.