RALEIGH, N.C. — Wake County students will have a day off from school on a Muslim high holy day beginning in 2021.
The Wake County Board of Education voted Tuesday to approve the academic calendar for the 2020-2021 school year.
The schedule includes about a dozen teacher workdays throughout the year, and one of them will be used on May 13. That date in 2021 coincides with Eid Al-Fitr, an annual Muslim celebration which marks the end of Ramadan.
"It means a lot. It's huge," said Mariya Shaikh, who has two children at Athens Drive High School.
"This is something that's already done in other states, so for Wake County to be the trendsetter in North Carolina, it's a huge step forward in the right direction. This is a very legitimate need of a growing voter segment of the Wake County population. This is just, I feel, the right thing to do."
Shaikh previously presented the idea to the Wake County Public Schools System calendar committee at a meeting a couple of years ago, but did not get the response she sought. She launched a petition in late October to gauge how many people might support the acknowledgment of an Islamic holiday.
The change.org page to "Make Eid a WCPSS holiday" received more than 2,000 signatures in its first two days online, and tallied 5,275 signatures before the Board of Education made its vote.
She made the case that other religions receive days off for their holy days. Wake Schools started scheduling teacher workdays on Yom Kippur for Jewish students a few years ago. The 2017-2018 calendar had an early release on Yom Kippur, as it began on a Friday evening.
"When other major faith groups in the area are given teacher work days on days that they request, why should our community not be given the same," Shaikh said.
"We welcome the other teacher work days, because those segments are also growing segments of the population, so just like them we need to be heard, too. I'm very hopeful and motivated that the board will listen to us," she said Tuesday before the vote.
The issue was already on the Board of Education meeting was scheduled before mass shootings at two mosques Friday in New Zealand. Fifty people died while dozens of others were wounded.
"I think the board's decision in favor of a Muslim holiday is going to be the right thing to do in the wake of things that have happened," Shaikh said.
"Even if you exclude everything that we have done (to advocate for this change), it does enforce the fact that you need to do the right thing, and this is the right thing to do."
The school system said teacher workday decisions are not made for religious reasons, but are based on anticipation of large numbers of student and staff absences.
Shaikh said there are Muslim students who vie for perfect attendance awards and compete to be at the top of their class, and some would choose to be in school rather than risk losing instruction time. She and others Raleigh-area Muslims said that is a decision which children and their families should not have to make.
"It's amazingly exciting," North Carolina State University alumna Zainab Baloch said.
"I went to Wakefield High School, and one of the toughest challenges was having to go to school on Eid, the holiday I celebrate, and having to choose between academics and religion, or really just a holiday.
Another day scheduled for a teacher workday in 2020 is Tuesday, November 3, which is the date of the Presidential election. Some lawmakers want general elections to become federal holidays.
Christian holidays which receive teacher work days are Christmas and Easter. The 2020-2021 calendar has a work day on December 21, the Monday before Christmas, and two days after Easter. Maundy Thursday and Good Friday take place during Spring Break, which will last 11 days due to the teacher work days.
Students will have a four-day weekend in January, with a teacher workday the Tuesday after the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, and another due to closures February 15-16 for Presidents Day and the day after, which is Mardi Gras.
Several of the days are available for inclement weather make up-days.
