No School on Religious Holidays

Some American communities with large Jewish populations close their public schools on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The first school district to do this was New York City.

The city had been home to thousands of Jews for years before it decided to officially close school on these days. The Board of Education made this decision in 1960, citing administrative reasons. So many teachers at the time were Jewish and took the day off that it was difficult to staff schools on these major holidays, which come shortly after the start of the academic year.

Decades passed before other religious and ethnic holidays were taken off the school calendar. In 2015, New York City decided to close school on two Muslim holidays, Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha. The next year, it added the Lunar New Year, a holiday in many Asian cultures, to the list of school closures. The newest no-school day, which is observed this November 1, is the Hindu holiday of Diwali.