We get the religious holidays off that impact the most staff, teachers and then students. Although they no longer call the days off by their religious name in the school calendar, they still give off the holidays that they are least likely to be able to staff. If MCPS closed for every religion’s holidays there would not be enough school days. This is not perfect and absolutely not ‘fair’ for people whose holidays fall on school days but other than by the numbers I know no better way to sort what days school should be closed. I would think that if more staff, teachers and students celebrated Diwali and so asked for the day off or got an excused absence, the next year MCPS would need to be closed.

Anonymous wrote:What is Diwali? Never heard of it.

In the amount of time it took you to post an ignorant message you could have googled it

It is a simple question of whether they think there will be enough staff to run the schools on these days. Staff cannot be denied leave for religious holidays and if there are more absences than subs to fill the jobs it would be unsafe for students.
Agree with the PP who liked the years when they planned a Professional day on November 1. It was a popular decision with teachers and parents! Too bad the calendar doesn’t work out that way anymore.

Anonymous wrote:What is Diwali? Never heard of it.

Hindu festival of lights

What is Diwali? Never heard of it.

If more Indian Americans moved to MoCo, they would start to have Diwali as a dismissal holiday.

They did do a survey about student and staff likely attendance on various holidays back in 2018.

https://go.boarddocs.com/mabe/mcpsmd/Board.nsf/files/B2YGZ8463178/$file/Hanover%20PPT%20for%20July%2019%2C%202018%2C%20Policy%20Management%20Meeting.pdf

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

Because of the sheer number of people who have the legal right to take that day off for religious observation, which make is pointless to have the school building open.

+1 it's about the practicality.

The only reason MCPS closes on a lot of the main Jewish holidays is because of the number of people who would be out, teachers and admin included. Easier just to close the school. Same for Christmas.

And I'm not Jewish. I'm from CA, and when we first moved here and found out about the Jewish holiday closures, I could not understand why, until someone told me how many Jewish people live in MoCo.

In CA where I'm from, we get a ski week off in February because of the number of families who pull their kids out of school to go skiing.

The flaw is that they have not been able to inquire about people's religion for decades so the data is from the 70s. Far fewer Jewish people % wise here now.

Well, they can try to not make those days holidays, and then see how many people take off. Pretty sure lots of people will not be in school.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

Because it falls during a scheduled break. Just liket this.

Are you stupid? Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

The scheduled break has purposefully always been around major Christian holidays. Has it been a coincidence that winter break mysteriously always includes Christmas and Spring Break always mysteriously is around Easter????? Come on. Use common sense. This is an old tradition based on decades of predominantly Christian-based populations that's very antiquated.

The nasty tones here are completely unnecessary.

No, it's not a coincidence, it's state law.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

We aren’t India.

We're also not Italy, yet somehow we have Christmas off.

Are you stupid? We have a lot of Christian’s here, you moron. We don’t need to be in Italy to have a large population of Christian’s.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

We aren’t India.

We're also not Italy, yet somehow we have Christmas off.

Just because the breaks and holidays are not called those things does not mean they where purposefully scheduled for people who observe those things. Your point makes no sense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

Because it falls during a scheduled break. Just liket this.

Are you stupid? Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

The scheduled break has purposefully always been around major Christian holidays. Has it been a coincidence that winter break mysteriously always includes Christmas and Spring Break always mysteriously is around Easter????? Come on. Use common sense. This is an old tradition based on decades of predominantly Christian-based populations that's very antiquated.

The nasty tones here are completely unnecessary.

The false premise of your question was more unnecessary. Maybe when you stop behaving in bad faith, you might get good faith answers.

But since you just acknowledged that you were, in fact, being deliberately obtuse, allow me to break this down for you:

The American tradition is to have separation of church and state. This is well covered in the Federalist papers. As such, religious holidays have never been called such on the school calendar. For a very long time, Christianity was the majority religion in this country -- it still is, of course, but observers of other faiths have grown appreciatively, and so we now accommodate their holidays in our public schools in the interest of diversity, equity and inclusion (you know, those things that make America great!). Only, due to the tradition that we separate church and state, we don't actually call it those things.

Do you understand this now a little better? Or are you going to continue to act like an utter dipshit?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

Because it falls during a scheduled break. Just liket this.

Are you stupid? Or are you being deliberately obtuse?

The scheduled break has purposefully always been around major Christian holidays. Has it been a coincidence that winter break mysteriously always includes Christmas and Spring Break always mysteriously is around Easter????? Come on. Use common sense. This is an old tradition based on decades of predominantly Christian-based populations that's very antiquated.

The nasty tones here are completely unnecessary.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Hi All! Usually it was labeled as "Professional day". How come no holiday this year? Anyone know?

Why would it need to be a holiday off of school?

Why is Christmas?

Because of the sheer number of people who have the legal right to take that day off for religious observation, which make is pointless to have the school building open.

+1 it's about the practicality.

The only reason MCPS closes on a lot of the main Jewish holidays is because of the number of people who would be out, teachers and admin included. Easier just to close the school. Same for Christmas.

And I'm not Jewish. I'm from CA, and when we first moved here and found out about the Jewish holiday closures, I could not understand why, until someone told me how many Jewish people live in MoCo.

In CA where I'm from, we get a ski week off in February because of the number of families who pull their kids out of school to go skiing.

The flaw is that they have not been able to inquire about people's religion for decades so the data is from the 70s. Far fewer Jewish people % wise here now.