Comments on: Tampa Schools Scrap Religious Holidays

By: The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns

The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 17:38:01 +0000

Christmas Cancelled?

With the approach of Christmas, comes more questioning about the relevance of Christian holidays in schools. Dust My Broom shares some information on Florida's Hillsborough County School Board's ban on Christmas at public schools after a Muslim group...

By: Just Me

Just Me — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 01:26:11 +0000

Case law requires that schools allow students to take any religious holiday off as an excused absence from school anyway.

So if they want to take the day, the school can't count it as an unexcused absence, and the kids just need to make up any missed work.

I don't think this is a huge issue. How many people actually attend a Good Friday service during school hours anyway?

By: Tina

Tina — Thu, 27 Oct 2005 01:24:24 +0000

The reason many public schools get a couple of the Jewish holidays off is the large proportion of Jewish students/teachers/administrators in the school's district. In my sister's area, they would have to find subs for almost 1/3 of the teachers, and nearly 1/2 of the students wouldn't be there anyway. They extend the school year farther into June to make up for it. No one has complained yet. Want Eid, etc. off? Fine, grow a large Muslim population and finish school around July 4.

By: jimbo

jimbo — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:22:31 +0000

When I was in school back in the 1950s Jewish kids got their holidays off and they also got Xmas holidays. Nobody cared. Face it, most of 'culture' is based in religious observance. It would be better to make sone concession to the Moslems than to abolish formerly religious holidays that mean something to a significant portion of the population even if the meaning is now totally secularized. People are gonna say that they abolished Christmas to appease the Moslems. Please let us not go the way of the French who banned the wearing of crucifixes and Stars of David rather than admit that some Moslem women feel a religious obligation to cover themselves.

By: Hyscience

Hyscience — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:04:19 +0000

Cowered By Muslim Group CAIR - HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY (FLORIDA) SCHOOL BOARD BANS CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS (And Good Friday And 'Easter' And Yom Kippur) - Updated

killing Christmas holidays in Hillsborough County marks a real coup for Muslims, CAIR and the ACLU. AND THE HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD JUST BENT OVER AND CAVED IN WITHOUT EVEN THE SLIGHTEST ATTEMPT TO FIGHT BACK!!!

By: Doug

Doug — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:07:00 +0000

When I was in school, we did get Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah off. The reason apparently had something to do with the fact that attendance would fall below state mandated minimums for those days if school was open, meaning that they couldn't be counted as actual school days on the calendar anyway. Since I am not Jewish, I just looked at it as another day off.

I don't ever recall having Good Friday off, except if it was part of the regular Spring Break.

Personally, I don't see the big deal about removing purely religious holidays such as these from the school calendar.

By: Don Singleton

Don Singleton — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 19:06:55 +0000

Schools Scrap Religious Holidays

Actually I would be in favor of giving Muslims one holiday, if Christians were allowed to truly celebrate the true basis for Christmas and Easter.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 15:33:53 +0000

Barry is right. In fact, the Muslim leader quoted in the story is quite peeved that they got rid of the Eid Al-Fitr holiday.

By: Barry

Barry — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 15:13:37 +0000

Thunderbird, it's "kowtow", and they didn't do it. If they had, they'd have put muslim holidays on. What they obviously did was to sacrifice existing holidays, rather than recognize a muslim holiday. That would be rather the opposite.