A Connecticut school board has sparked outrage after voting to remove two federal holidays from the academic calendar.
Students will not have Columbus Day or Veterans Day off during the 2024-25 and 2025-25 school years after Tuesday's 5-3 vote by the Stamford Board of Education, the Stamford Advocate reported. Both would still be recognized in educational content provided on those days, which is required under a state statute, according to the newspaper.
Columbus Day is typically observed on the second Monday in October, marking Italian explorer Christopher Columbus' sighting in 1492 of what came to be known as the Americas. Veterans Day, honoring the nation's military veterans, is observed on November 11.
Board member Joshua Esses proposed the motion to take both holidays off the calendar. The proposed 181-day calendar lasted too long and that making it shorter would be "better educationally for our students," Esses said, according to the Advocate.
"Every American owes gratitude to our wonderful Veterans and to Christopher Columbus," Esses told Newsweek via email on Tuesday. "I believe students can best learn about their contributions in school. Otherwise, they have a vacation day without any focus on why we honor our Veterans and Columbus in the first place."
Esses had also suggested eliminating Eid al-Fitr, an Islamic holiday, and the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as days off. However, that effort received no support.
The move to remove the two federal holidays has sparked outrage in the community.
"It was a gut punch," Alfred Fusco, a veteran and member of Italian-American service organization UNICO, told WABC-TV in New York City.
Columbus Day has become divisive in recent decades. While some celebrate Columbus as a hero, others denounce him as a colonizer who enslaved many of the indigenous people he encountered and subjected them to extreme violence and brutality. Some states and cities have renamed the federal holiday Indigenous Peoples Day.
Fusco, however, said it was important to mark the holiday and "not whitewash" history.
"A lot of bad things happened in this country after the discovery, let's not whitewash it," he said. "I said what happened on October 12, 1492, the discovery of America, was the most significant event in the history of the human race."
Others expressed anger at the decision on social media.
"Slap in the face to the Italian community and our Veterans!" one person wrote in a comment on Facebook.
Another person called it "disgusting" and said their child "will not go to school on those days."
Others welcomed the move.
"Good! Kids get too many days off from school," one person wrote. "And nobody is really being honored on any of those days off. It's simply a day off from school. Sad but true."
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