With the Lunar New Year quickly approaching, MVHS students enrolled in the Chinese language program have been busy at work, creating a variety of decorations — from paper door banners to upside-down 福 (fú, meaning fortune) characters — to adorn classroom doors throughout the campus in celebration of the holiday. However, even as the school campus fills with festive spirit in anticipation of the holiday, students and staff will find themselves attending school on the special day, instead of enjoying the festivities with an officially recognized day off.
While school breaks are often planned around Christian and U.S. Federal holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, widely celebrated holidays of other cultural backgrounds do not receive the same recognition. Thus, the disconnect between school holidays and the diverse range of holidays MVHS students celebrate forces many to choose between academics and traditional celebrations. Though she is still able to spend time enjoying her cultural holidays, sophomore Pragti Gupta recognizes the internal struggle she faces during holidays like Diwali, often finding herself neglecting her culture in favor of her schoolwork.
“I feel guilt-tripped by my parents and my friends because they’re always like, ‘Come on, it’s a holiday, you can study later,’” Gupta said. “And I’m like, ‘No, I can’t.’ So they’re sitting there helping me with my tests while they could be celebrating outside, and it just feels wrong to be doing that.”
Like Gupta, many students often find themselves faced with tests during or immediately after major holidays they celebrate. The difficulty in better recognition of these holidays through school breaks lies in balancing these requests with the need to consider state regulations and logistical challenges that come with adjusting the academic calendar. Since the school is not always able to provide students with time off, according to Chinese teacher Zoey Liu, MVHS Principal Ben Clausnitzer emails the staff prior to major cultural holidays to inform them of the holidays. In the message, he also suggests that teachers lighten students’ workloads to allow them to celebrate.
“We have the awareness, but we technically don’t have any breaks that align with those major traditions or holidays,” Liu said. “I understand why, because if our district starts giving holidays for, for example, Lunar New Year, then other ethnic groups will start advocating for their own holidays. And if we add all of them together, that’s going to be multiple days — maybe even weeks — off.”
California state laws require a minimum of 180 instructional days in the academic calendar, which means time allocated for additional breaks will inevitably take away from existing breaks. This presents a dilemma: Which holidays should be prioritized, and whose input should be considered in making these decisions?
To Liu, a determining factor for whether a break is necessary on a specific holiday is how important family reunions are to its celebration. Like many holidays, one of the most important parts of the Lunar New Year is to get together with family, with travels around the holiday marking the world’s largest annual human migration. However, while California law dictates that public schools must close for holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, which share a similar principle, thus allowing families to travel, Liu highlights that visiting her family in China during Lunar New Year is not even something she can consider due to the lack of break.
According to US News and the MVHS school profile, Asian students constitute 78.6% of the school population, with a 29% Chinese and 41% Indian demographic — cultures in which Diwali and Lunar New Year hold profound significance and are commonly celebrated. Given that a substantial portion of MVHS families observe these traditions, junior Mariam Ahmad emphasizes the necessity for school policies to better reflect the diversity of the community, recognizing the cultural and religious significance of such holidays to ensure that all groups feel their traditions are valued. For instance, she speaks to the representation of her own Muslim traditions, namely Ramadan.
“Ramadan is very important to me, and I’m guessing for others, their holidays — like Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah — are just as important,” Ahmad said. “I’m not saying we should add 100 different holidays, but when a holiday is so important to a large portion of the student body, I think that justifies why we should have time off for it.”
Currently, decisions about school holidays are made by district administrators and a vote by the FEA Teachers’ Association. However, Ahmad and Gupta believe that the voices of students and parents should be prioritized over broader district-wide policies, and that the addition of a structured way for students and families to express their needs could lead to more balanced decisions. Liu agrees that the process may not be fully representative of the school community, as the district’s teacher and administrator demographic differs greatly from the student demographic. However, she also acknowledges two concerns with adapting the current process and schedules: It would take too long to survey the thousands of people in the community about when they want to have breaks, making it impractical, and any resulting decisions the school makes to recognize certain holidays may become politically complex.
“If the school decides to do something to show representation for Lunar New Year, it almost sends the message that they value the Lunar New Year, but not necessarily Diwali or other cultural festivals because they didn’t do anything for those holidays,” Liu said. “So then it goes back to the same question: Whose culture do you choose? If, from the school’s point, we say that there will be a school wide rally to honor this, then it becomes a kind of political question of ‘Why choose that?’”
Ultimately, the question of how to balance school breaks with cultural inclusivity remains complex. Ahmad acknowledges that compromises will have to be made in order to create a functional schedule, including potentially foregoing breaks on her cultural holidays due to the smaller Muslim population at MVHS. However, she still hopes that the academic system will find ways to better reflect the diverse traditions of their students in a way that feels both fair and inclusive.
“I feel like since this country’s become so diverse and you see people from so many different backgrounds, it would be nicer for the school to consider adding other people’s holidays as well,” Ahmad said. “By recognizing these major holidays that are being celebrated by the community, they’d be more inclusive and that could foster a sense of belonging for the students.”
