Chinese New Year celebration renews push to add more cultural, religious holidays to public school calendar

Lion dancers perform Friday during the Asian Lunar New Year Firecracker Ceremony and Cultural Festival, in Roosevelt Park, in Manhatttan's Chinatown. The Lunar New Year this year marks the Year of the Horse on the Chinese calendar. Some Asian parents with children in the city's public schools opted to keep their children home from classes Friday so that they could observe the holiday with family, sparking a renewed call to add more holidays for cultural and religious observances to the public school calendar. (Associated Press/Richard Drew)
on January 31, 2014 at 7:30 PM, updated February 01, 2014 at 12:49 AM

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The celebration of  the Asian Lunar New Year has renewed a call among state and city legislators to close public schools for the holiday, and possibly other religious and cultural observances, so that students and parents would not need to choose between celebrating their cultural and religious traditions or losing a day of instruction.

The push comes as many parents in heavily-Asian communities such as Manhattan's Chinatown and parts of Queens opted to keep their children home from school Friday, to celebrate the Lunar Year of the Horse. The first day of the celebration is usually spent visiting family members and feasting on traditional foods.

Advocates have been pushing for the city to close schools in observance of Chinese New Year and on major Muslim feast days, but faced strong opposition from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg who feared that to do so would open the door to a flood of similar requests from other cultural, religious and ethnic groups among the city's diverse population.

But Mayor Bill de Blasio and City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito have been supportive of the idea, with the Council speaker saying she would introduce a resolution in support of adding more holidays to the calendar. "The way we build understanding is by really respecting culture," Mark-Viverito said.

De Blaso has said he would also be supportive of adding the Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha to the school calendar.

On the state level, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), whose district includes Chinatown in lower Manahttan, said that the Assembly would consider a bill requiring school districts to at least consider making a school holiday out of any day when a significant number of students are expected to be absent.

State law requires school districts to maintain a minimum of 180 of instruction days during the school year. If additional holidays are added, the days would have to be made up by either extending the school year in June, starting the school year earlier, possibly before Labor Day, or knocking out days from the mid-winter and spring recess that are scheduled around Presidents Day and Easter/Passover.

At least one Staten Island private school, Staten Island Academy, has already taken the initiative by adding the Muslim feast days to its list of observed holidays.

The last year the school system added a holiday to the calendar was in 1986, when it added Dr. Martin Luther King Day. That day, which observes the birthday of the slain Civil Rights leader, is also a federal, state and city holiday.