Saturday, October 19, 2013

Both leading candidates for NY City Mayor promise to close NY City schools for at least 2 Muslim holidays-NY Daily News

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10/18/13, "After Bill de Blasio, Joe Lhota vow to add Muslim holidays to school calendar, other groups seek recognition," NY Daily News, Jennifer Fermino

"The leading mayoral candidates vowed to close school for the Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. Now advocates for other religious and ethnic groups would like their days to be recognized as well."

"There are currently at least two bills in Albany that would give city school kids extra time off.

One would close schools on the Chinese New Year. The other would close on the two Muslim Eid holidays that Lhota and de Blasio want to recognize: Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha, which celebrates the willingness of the prophet Ibrahim to sacrifice his son Ismail....

The bills also wouldn’t be needed if the new mayor wanted to simply add the holidays to the calendar....

Dromm introduced a resolution in July to close school on the holy day of Diwali, a festival of lights celebrated by Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains.

A spokesman for Lhota said he’d consider adding other holidays. De Blasio has said he supports adding the Chinese New Year, but his campaign wouldn’t comment on Diwali.

Mayor Bloomberg has resisted adding holidays to avoid clashes in a city of immigrants. “When you have a city as diverse as New York, you simply cannot add a holiday for every religion,”  

Bloomberg spokesman Jake Goldman said. “The city hasn’t added a school holiday since Martin Luther King Day in 1986 for that reason.”

Kids must attend school for a total of 183 days, so any holidays would have to be made up during the year."

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