School News

Valley Stream high schools to recognize Islamic holidays

Board of Ed president criticized for mixing governance and politics

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Board President Cristobal Stewart, left, said the move was important “especially now, at this moment in our country’s history.”
Board President Cristobal Stewart, left, said the move was important “especially now, at this moment in our country’s history.”
Nick Ciccone/Herald

The Central High School District approved a motion on Feb. 14 to recognize Islam’s two holiest holidays on the school calendar beginning next year.

Some 1.6 billion people who comprise the global Muslim community spend those holidays with family and friends, taking the day off from work and school to feast and exchange gifts. Beginning in 2015, New York City public schools closed in observance of both major holidays — Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan, and Eid al-Adha. Several Nassau County schools have recently added either Eid or Diwali, a Hindu holiday, to the calendar, including Herricks, Hicksville and East Williston.

The dates of the holidays change each year based on the lunar calendar. Eid al-Fitr will fall on June 15, 2018. Eid al-Adha will fall on Aug. 22, and thus will not affect the schools’ calendars.

Bill Heidenreich, superintendent of the high schools, told the Herald in December that the district monitored attendance on Eid al-Adha last September, and there were 225 to 250 absentees, or about 5 percent of students. That was likely a low estimate of the number of Muslims, he said, because many Muslim students feel pressure to attend class.

Hempstead Town Clerk Nasrin Ahmad, who is Muslim, commended the school districts for their action. She first began lobbying for the holidays to be recognized in the East Meadow school district more than 25 years ago. “It’s very close to my heart,” she said.

The high schools’ board president, Cristobal Stewart, said he thought the motion “recognizes a shared value of diversity, of tolerance, of religious tolerance, that is certainly a message worth teaching our children — especially now, at this moment in our country’s history.

“There are many reasons for us to disagree with one another, and we should do so in a civil way,” Stewart continued. “However, there are many more reasons for us to agree with one another.”

While many people were pleased with the board’s decision, Stewart’s comments — specifically those that later appeared in Newsday — drew criticism.

He told Newsday that it was particularly important to recognize the Muslim holidays “in the time of Trump.” He added that not everyone in the community or among school officials was in favor of adding the holidays, and that “people had to be persuaded.” He also mentioned that Muslim students had been harassed, called names and threatened with violence in the past.

Resident Tom Chen was not at the meeting last week, but said he disapproved of Stewart’s comments. “In my personal view, the Board of Education president — especially of the high schools — should not be making these kinds of political statements,” he said.

Chen added that he was in favor of recognizing the makeup of the community on the school calendar, and likened Valley Stream to Manhattan because of its cultural diversity. But Stewart crossed the line, Chen said, by invoking President Trump’s policies as a reason to add the holiday.

Christine O’Toole, who was also in favor of expanding the school calendar, said she thought Stewart improperly used his power to score political points. “As a board of education member you are held to a higher standard,” she wrote in an email to the Herald. “You are supposed to remain neutral on political views. To try to divide our community unnecessarily is disgusting.”

O’Toole said she did not think mentioning Trump was appropriate, since the board began considering the addition of the Islamic holidays before he took office. “In all my years in the school district, I have never heard of one incident of a child being harassed or threatened because they were Muslim,” she said. “I am appalled the Board of Education president … had the audacity to spew his own political views.”

The high schools were the last district to vote on the Eid holidays, which is now being negotiated with the schools' teacher's union.

Patrick Naglieri, president of the Valley Stream Teacher’s Association, said the union was in favor of recognizing the religious holidays.

“I told [Heidenreich] early on that we were totally in support of having the schools closed on Muslim holidays because we did not think it was fair for those children to have to make a decision as to whether or not their religious obligations would conflict with their education obligations,” he said.

He also read Stewart’s comments in Newsday.

“I don’t know if the board president was speaking for himself or speaking for the board,” he said. “If he was speaking for the school board I think that’s disappointing for that issue to be politicized.”

Naglieri, who also serves as a guidance counselor at Memorial Junior High School, said that parents and teachers he’s spoken to were upset with Stewart’s mention of a “political agenda,” and not upset by recognizing the holidays.

He said he thought that the school board needed to address Stewart’s comments going forward.

“If the school board is silent on it, they are acquiescent to it,” he said, adding that one of the things he’s respected about the board over the years is that it “has stayed out of political issues.”

Stewart said he wasn’t aware of such criticism. “It doesn’t make any sense to me, actually,” he said. “Newsday did an interview with me as a board member, and I spoke about my views as a board member. I think that’s where my responsibility ends.”

He said that his mention of national politics was in response to questions he was asked by Newsday, but he stood by his comments about the board’s willingness to add the holidays, and about bias incidents in the schools.

“It was not immediately, I guess, thought to be something that we had to deal with right away,” he said, referring to the Board of Education.

Stewart elaborated on his comments to Newsday about students being harassed “simply for having the audacity to show up at school as a Muslim.”

“I know that these incidents have been reported to me as a school board member,” he said. “I’ve seen texts that were received by [Muslim] children that were threatening and deceiving … That level of vitriol and hate I was not aware of.”

He said he was shocked to learn that students had been harassed, and added that he understood how that could be shocking for others. “I understand that people recoil at this idea of talking about unpleasant things, but I’m not sure how we address problems that we have in the schools if we don’t talk about them,” he said, before noting that there are plenty of favorable things going on at the schools as well.

The high school district will make next year’s calendar official on March 14.

Heidenreich could not be reached for comment.

Comments about this story? Send letters to the editor to nciccone@liherald.com.