A divided School Board on Thursday night (May 15) opted not to add a last-minute school holiday in early June to accommodate a key date on the Islamic calendar . Although their votes went in different directions, Board members each said they were conflicted in selecting the best option available to them. “I feel very torn about this,” Board Chair Mary Kadera said in trying to balance competing interests on short notice. School officials had learned May 12 that Eid al-Adha should be commemorated this year on Friday, June 6. Previously, they had expected it to be marked during the subsequent weekend, which would not have required a school closure. The timing of the holiday often is not known until just weeks before, as it is based on an analysis of the Islamic lunar calendar. After hearing of the discrepancy from original planning, school system staff conferred with leaders of three local Islamic centers to determine the best course of action. The staff’s proposal to make June 6 a holiday drew complaints from some parents and teachers, primarily owing to the short notice and impact it would have on end-of-school activities and extracurricular activities. “The harms outweigh the benefits of making the change,” said Merrit Gillard, who spoke during the School Board’s May 15 public comment period. Several speakers said one of the impacts of the change would be eliminating participation by music students at Thomas Jefferson Middle School in the Music in the Parks festival held annually at Hershey Park. “Asking them to skip it … would be a huge blow,” Gillard said. Others told ARLnow it would impact a graduation ceremony, a middle school music competition, and other special school events. “Parents are mad,” said a tipster. But several parents and community leaders said making June 6 a holiday was necessary if Arlington was to live up to its ideals of inclusiveness. Eid al-Adha is “one of the holiest days in Islam,” said Nouha Shwehdi, who spoke to Board members. “The importance of this religious day for Muslims cannot be minimized,” she said. The event is “a festival of sacrifice,” said Mohamed Tanvir, representing the Clarendon Islamic Center in supporting the additional day off for students and staff. The final vote to make the day a holiday was one board member in favor, two opposed and two abstaining. Among those abstaining was Kadera. “I don’t take lightly an abstention,” said Kadera, noting it was her first in more than three years in office. But her choice was based on deep conflicts about the correct action to take, she said. “There’s no way for us to solve this problem without somebody being negatively impacted,” she said. Zuraya Tapia-Hadley also abstained. She said the conundrum left her with a heavy heart, but pointed to impacts on students and parents a last-minute schedule switch would make. Tapia-Hadley said she planned to mark the occasion with Islamic families, and said the school system needed to ensure students not attending classes on June 5 received excused absences. Board member Miranda Turner, who with Kathleen Clark voted against adding the holiday next month, said most the hundreds of parents she had interacted with on the issue were supportive of a diversity of cultural holidays being marked throughout the school year. But those same parents said the short notice of a possible change created “many, many, many more burdens” that needed to be taken into account, Turner said. Some educators also voiced concern that a late holiday addition would cut into instructional time just as students were gearing up for exams. The new holiday also would have required a shift in graduation ceremonies at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Program , slated for June 6. In the end, Turner said, all she and her colleagues could do was “the best we can” in determining how to prioritize competing interests. A proposed middle ground — allowing some after-school activities to occur on June 6 despite schools being closed — was considered by quickly rejected as unworkable by Board members. Several Board members acknowledged the school system failed in not recognizing that the date of the holiday was fluid. Kadera said the 2024-25 calendar should have included the notation that the date of Eid al-Adha was not fixed and could change. “This is a pretty significant stumble,” she admitted. “We should have planned for this in a better way,” Tapia-Hadley said. A similar case had occurred several years ago, and Eid al-Adha was added onto the calendar, school staff said. But several Board members said there had been more lead time then to address impacts of the change. The lone Board member to support the adding June 6 as a holiday was Bethany Zecher Sutton. She said that whatever the outcome this year, it was vital to amend the school system’s holiday policy going forward to accommodate events that may have fluid dates. “We can and will fix this for the future,” she said. The 2026 Eid al-Adha commemoration is tentatively anticipated to occur on Wednesday, May 27, and is scheduled as a school-system holiday. Had the day been used for a holiday, the school system still would have exceeded the state-minimum 990 hours of annual instructional time, staff said at the meeting. No make-up time would have been required, they said. Also at the May 15 meeting, a school-system bus driver, Mulugeta Yimer, asked Board members to permit Orthodox Christians a day off for prayer in future years. Fairfax County Public Schools does provide such a day off for prayer, and doing so would support the many APS workers from Ethiopia who adhere to that religion, Yimer said.
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