Reply to Has your elementary school changed the name of its valentine party?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a teacher at an elementary school that has a fair number of children from Jehovah's Witness families.   Their families do not celebrate any holidays, including birthdays.   The families do not approve of children having holiday celebrations at school and will keep their children home if they learn of any holiday celebrations.   If there is an event at school that has a legitimate academic focus, then that is generally OK by them, but just plain holiday celebrations is not.  This includes Thanksgiving lunch, Valentine's Day parties, Christmas parties, and May Day, and birthday celebrations.

[/quote]

The let them stay home.   [/quote]

If they do, it wrecks our attendance numbers.   For adequate yearly progress, we need something like 92% attendance rate for the year.   If too many kids stay home for all the holidays and parties, we won't make AYP.

And the Jehovah's Witnesses will want their kids staying home to be an excused absence, as the children's presence in school would mean that they are participating in the celebration (which violates their religious beliefs).   Since the celebrations aren't part of the curriculum, it really isn't fair to say that the kids have to come to school and have to sit in the library until the parties are over.    So if you schools change the celebrations to something that IS part of the curriculum, then the JW can't complain as much (or their complaints woudln't hold up in a lawsuit).[/quote]

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