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    RedWillDanaherKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:16pm

    Voters,

    Pay attention to your local elections. Odds are there is a fundy nutter on the school board you vote for (and city council, county commisioner...) There is a slow-motion coup being attempted in this country that is funded by a handful of billionaire business criminals.

    They win when we don't care. Clearly, we don't care.

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      AikageRedWillDanaher
      11/13/14 2:20pm

      I joined the PTA and some local boards for this reason. People always say that stupid line like, "IF YOU DONT LIKE THE WAY POLITICIANS ARE RUNNING THE PLACE, THEN GET INTO POLITICS."

      We'll see how it goes.

      ETA: First step is to shut down the woman who wants to "separate the chaff from the wheat" in terms of the school book fairs because she gave her kid 40 bucks and he bought Minecraft books with that money.

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      crowTrobotRedWillDanaher
      11/13/14 2:22pm

      As usual, Texas is showing us the way in everything awful. If they get their way, public schools will become full blown indoctrination camps for radical right wing ideology.

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    tuxedocatherineKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:25pm

    I get that these people are doing this to be assholes, but in reality, on all my school calendars growing up, it was listed as Winter Break and not Christmas Break, which makes sense since there were plenty of students who didn't celebrate Christmas. So, in doing the dickish thing aren't they just doing the right thing?

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      jasarratuxedocatherine
      11/13/14 2:35pm

      At my school, we had a "Christmas Break," and the day before it we all sat around for a Christmas play and then the choir sang Christmas carols and all sorts of other religious bullshit. That was in 2008, btw, and in a neighboring county to these assholes.

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      tuxedocatherinejasarra
      11/13/14 2:37pm

      Huh. Ours was called Winter Break and the day before there was "Holiday Pageant" featuring a Christmas play and Christmas carols and a Hannukah play and traditional Jewish songs. So, same nonsense, just more inclusive. I like to think that had there been a Muslim population a the school, they would have been represented, too, but who knows.

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    emfish55Kara Brown
    11/13/14 2:22pm

    Was just listening to this story on Kojo Nnamdi (local NPR show in the DMV) and two things to note:

    - While originally Muslim families wanted Eid ul Fut off, they actually asked for a much smaller observance. In 2015, Eid ul Fut and Yom Kippur fall on the same day. Since MoCo already takes Yom Kippur off, the Muslim families simply asked that on the school calendar, they mention Eid ul Fut in addition to Yom Kippur. It was in response to this request that the school board decided to stop mentioning any religious holidays on the schedule, even though everyone knows which ones they are tied to. So they didn't even ask for another holiday, just a mention. Which makes what the school board did seem even more passive aggressive, and explains why the Muslim families now feel like the school board is purposefully trying to troll them.

    - The representative of the Muslim families on NPR noted that while the school board says that Eid ul Fut failed to meet the threshold for absenteeism to merit being made a holiday (meaning the school district looks at how many teacher and students take a day off for religious observance and will cancel school if it's enough people that it doesn't make sense to hold class), he also noted that the threshold isn't any actual number or percent. It's just that the school board looked at the numbers and said, "That's not enough." But the absences for other holidays apparently are enough. But no one knows what "enough" is. So Muslims in the county feel that the school board is keeping the threshold intentionally vague in order to preserve the holidays they like and avoid observing the ones they don't. If the board just had a clear threshold, this whole thing wouldn't smack of blatant favoritism of some religions over others.

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      GashlycrumbTinyemfish55
      11/13/14 2:29pm

      Thank you for the additional information!

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      Diablo Himselfemfish55
      11/13/14 2:31pm

      Thanks for writing this. I was wondering if there was a certain percentage "threshold" but it seems to just be one guy going "I CANT SEE ANY MUSLIMS ALSO MY EYES ARE CLOSED. LOL!"

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    imaginaryfriendKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:16pm
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      carrieannaimaginaryfriend
      11/13/14 2:37pm

      If I was more crafty, I'd make a yard sign saying "Put the Sol back in Solstice"

      Hahah

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      ellejayimaginaryfriend
      11/13/14 3:00pm

      saving this for facebook circa dec 22, 2014.

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    theboogiecatKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:19pm

    I sort of see the point of not canceling classes when a holiday is only observed by a very small group in the student population. But they can and should make some other accommodations, such as not counting it as an absence, directing teachers not to schedule tests or other significant events on that day, excusing the students from homework assigned for that day and even providing summaries of the material covered on that day. If they consider that too much of a burden, then cancel school for the day and make it easy.

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      Aikagetheboogiecat
      11/13/14 2:25pm

      Get your logic out of here. Nobody wants any of that.

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      BoreasaurusRextheboogiecat
      11/13/14 2:38pm

      I grew up in a non-Jewish area, and that was the norm for those of us who took the high holidays off. I never once had a teacher act like a douche about it. But to be clear, I'm Jewish (read: white-ish), not Muslim (read: non-white-ish).

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    ziggybloodlustKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:19pm

    Don't kids get, like, a 2-3 week long winter break? Why not parse up those days so everyone's stuff is covered?

    LOL, just kidding.

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      BecauseoftheImplicationziggybloodlust
      11/13/14 2:26pm

      Oh my gosh, ever since I moved to England and found out how they divvy up the school year, I have desperately wanted to run back to America and scream about HOW MUCH BETTER THIS IS!

      Basically, the school year is divided into trimesters with 2-week breaks in between two of them, and a 6-week break for summer. In each of those trimesters, there is a week-long break in the middle.

      It is so fucking awesome. There is no looming summer break in which the students all forget everything they have learned, and breaks are evenly parceled out so that students get time off, and teachers have time to catch up and marking and stuff. I love it. Plus it is easy enough to encompass any major religion's holidays in that time off.

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      marnyBecauseoftheImplication
      11/13/14 2:33pm

      I went to summer camp every year for 8 weeks when I was in school. I'd be so sad not to have had that opportunity. The schedule in England would have ruined that :(

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    ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ : Riot GRRR is RUNNING WILDKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:20pm

    Make sure the kids know about this... nothing will get the future of our nation more on board with religious tolerance than less school!

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      AnonymousCivilPersonʕ•ᴥ•ʔ : Riot GRRR is RUNNING WILD
      11/13/14 2:38pm

      I am an Agnostic because of Sunday School. As soon as they said "School on Sunday" I was like:

      GIF
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      mollymlf05AnonymousCivilPerson
      11/13/14 3:39pm

      Our "Sunday School" was on Tuesday nights. :-/ #catholicism

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    ballofstressKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:38pm

    Ok, this is the school district my daughter attends school in and to be perfectly honest, I'm 100% fine with this. I think that the media has DRASTICALLY overplayed the anti-Muslim card in all of this. This is an incredibly diverse, highly educated, very liberal county - I don't believe at all that this was about being anti-Islam.

    This decision was purely a matter of practicality and common sense. There was simply no way to accommodate the request of the Muslim community on this without the school district opening itself up to the same requests from any and all other religious groups, at which point the kids would never be in class. Thus, in order to remove the implicit endorsement of Christian and Jewish holidays, they are removing those labels and basing school closings on the percentage of the student body that would be expected to miss a given day due to religious observance. The approximate percentage of Muslims in the county is 5%, compared to far more significant populations of both Christians and Jews (in 2002, those figures were approximately 68% and 18% respectively). To put that in perspective, even if every single Muslim student in the county stayed home from school for Eid, it would be about 1/4 of the number that would miss school for Yom Kippur or 1/14 of those that would be absent for Christmas. Currently, the number of children absent on Eid is the equivalent of the normal absence rate for any given day. It simply does not make sense from a statistical standpoint to close schools for that small of a percentage of the community.

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      justmyinflationadjusted12centsballofstress
      11/13/14 2:54pm

      I did not even think of that. It is true that to be fair if they closed for that Muslim holiday then they would need to look into closing for the Hindu holidays as well if there were any Hindu parents in the district and picking which of those to celebrate would be difficult. I always like to think the best of people to be honest and your explanation seems reasonable if we assume non malicious intentions. From that perspective they decided to stop mentioning any religion when it was brought to their attention that they were discriminating.

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      bob_dballofstress
      11/13/14 6:23pm

      Obviously they can't give the whole school the day off for religious holidays that are observed by a tiny number of students, of course. But my understanding is that a day off wasn't even being asked for, since the day was already being given off because of it landing on the same day as a Jewish holiday. It seems like the school didn't want to label the day with the name of the Islamic holiday. It also seems strange to pretend the days being given off aren't connected to religious holidays, either. It's obviously a necessity unrelated to the school endorsing particular faiths, but they're still being given off because they're religious holidays being observed by the students.

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    BunnyZeaKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:19pm

    I would just like to use this opportunity to mention that the very same people who trying to pass laws banning the supposed threat of Sharia Law, are also trying to force "Christian Law" into actual law..... Because in America you are free to practice your religion as long as it's Christianity, you are free to carry a gun (AR-15 slung over your shoulder in Wallyworld) as long as you are white, free to love who you want as long as they don't share your gender, free to get all the healthcare for sexual health you desire as long as you have a penis....

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      MasterKimboBunnyZea
      11/13/14 2:43pm

      This needs more stars.

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      kafrometBunnyZea
      11/13/14 3:47pm

      It's the same people who want to legislate around sexual morality (gay rights, birth control, and abortion) but not charitable morality (public health care, homelessness, etc)

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    JosephFinnKara Brown
    11/13/14 2:30pm

    Alternatively, the district threw up their hands, realized there was no pleasing everyone and that there was no reason for them to be listing religious holidays that had no connection to the district anyway on their calendar and finally took them all off without changing at all which days the district would be off. So...everyone wins except for the whiners in said religions who just have to have their particular holidays trumpeted to the sky by organizations that have nothing to do with them. Those whiners? Fuck 'em.

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      jasarraJosephFinn
      11/13/14 2:37pm

      Except this is being framed as an "attack on Christmas," and therefore, on Christians. Trust me, I live in this area. No one is happy.

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      ballofstressjasarra
      11/13/14 2:53pm

      I live here too and the only people who are framing this as "an attack on Christmas" are the media.

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