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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....
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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