WASHINGTON (WMAL) — For the past several years, Muslim parents have unsuccessfully pressured the Montgomery County School Board to include Eid in the school calendar. Today they are trying again, and with a new approach.

“We’re asking them to move an existing professional day and place it on the Eid Holiday,” says Saqib Ali, co-chair of Equality 4 Eid.

Since Muslim holidays follow the lunar calendar it is difficult to predict when Eid will be, so the Board of Education would have to vote on a similar measure each year.

“I hope every year they’ll move a professional day to coincide with Eid,” Ali told WMAL.

In a memo to the school board, interim superintendent Larry Bowers cautioned against restricting the timing of professional days:

“Moving professional days within the school calendar,therefore, needs to be considered closely in terms of the educational interests and operational needs of the district as stated in Policy IDA. As indicated in Policy IDA, professional days provide staff with valuable opportunities to implement professional learning communities, collaborate on instructional strategies, review student data, plan collaboratively, and prepare report cards.

Careful consideration must be given to the timing and placement of these professional days so that they best support the opportunities enumerated in Policy IDA. This must be done collaboratively with support from teachers, supporting services staff, and administrators for whom those professional days are designed and intended.

Therefore, I recommend we take the time necessary to consider alternative approaches to our current practice with appropriate involvement from our different staff members as the appropriate next step.”

Still, Saqib says he’s hopeful.

“After the last election we have some new members of the Board of Education, and one of them–her name is Jill Ortman-Fouse–she has been an advocate of this measure,” he said, adding that the measure is a compromise. “We still would prefer to have the day off.”

Last year Equality 4 Eid requested that the School Board add Eid to the school calendar and “we had some really, really unpredictable stuff go on in that meeting.”

The board voted to remove references to all religious holidays from the school calendar, but still closed for religious holidays.

“I don’t know that it will be any different [this year], but we have to try.”

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