Lauren Singh’s family celebrates many cultures and traditions — the longtime Burlington resident is Jewish and was raised in Israel and married a Sikh man of Indian and Chinese descent.
So Singh was particularly pleased to see this year’s school calendar in Burlington list three new holidays — Diwali, Eid and Yom Kippur.
As her family gets ready to celebrate Diwali — the ancient Hindu festival of lights — with their Indian friends on Friday, Singh said she is glad the school district is acknowledging the date. It encourages her 9-year-old daughter, who attends Champlain Elementary School, to learn about different cultures and understand her own.
“I think it helps broaden the community,” Singh said. “It creates inclusivity, and it also shows respect for the cultures and the religious practices of this diverse community in Burlington.”
In addition to Burlington, the Champlain Valley School District — which includes Charlotte, Hinesburg, Shelburne, St. George and Williston — announced in April the addition of Eid (celebrated by Muslims worldwide), Yom Kippur (the holiest day in the Jewish calendar) and Diwali as school holidays “to recognize our increasingly diverse communities and to help create consistency.”
Vermont isn’t the only place where school districts have moved to mark Diwali, which is celebrated by more than a billion in India and the diaspora beyond. New York City schools are also closed for the festival for the first time this year, the Gothamist reported, after “years of advocacy by the South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities.”
For many Indian and Nepalese people in Vermont, the celebration connects and unites communities who now live far away from home. The Singh family enjoys attending Diwali festivities with prayer, lights and Indian food at a neighbor’s house.
South Burlington resident Rupali Agrawal has been hosting the celebration since moving to Vermont in 2011. On Thursday, she decorated the house with rangoli — colorful sand art, cooked rice, vegetables, chole and paneer, hosted a prayer and aarti ceremony (the offering of a flame to the gods, often paired with chanting prayers), followed by fireworks — a Diwali staple in India.
“I grew up celebrating Diwali in a small town in India,” she said, adding that she continues the tradition to recreate “that festive feeling” in South Burlington with her new friends.
The South Burlington School District does not mark Diwali as a holiday, but that does not stop the Agrawal family from continuing to celebrate on a school night.
“Diwali celebrates the victory of good over evil and light over darkness,” said Vyaan, Rupali’s 11-year-old son who attends the South Burlington Middle School. His favorite part of the festivities is the fireworks, Vyaan said, adding that he would like to get the day off on Diwali.
Doing so would allow the kids to help with the preparations at home, his mother added.
The Winooski School District — Vermont’s most diverse — already recognizes Diwali, Eid and Yom Kippur, as well as some others. Nov. 1 is marked as a school holiday for both Diwali and Tihar – the Nepalese five-day festival of lights.
Wilmer Chavarria, the district’s superintendent, was among a small group of school leaders who met this spring to discuss a common calendar for the greater Champlain Valley region, which stretches from Enosburgh to Vergennes. Superintendents were willing to discuss adding holidays, he said, to reflect the growing diversity in the region.
He said he’s been pleased with the willingness to “question the old ways” and the openness toward new ways of educating children, which includes revising the calendar to include holidays that are important to members of the communities they serve.
“I think all superintendents were willing and excited to have that conversation and to take concrete steps to make it happen,” he said. And it means “a community like Winooski is no longer the only exception” and “adds a little bit more of validity and legitimacy to the respect we have for our communities.”
The conversation continues and only some districts have adopted the new holidays this year.
With immigrant communities being increasingly dispersed across the state, Vermonters are being exposed to different cultures, which naturally leads to greater acceptance and to concrete things like a school calendar that reflects that reality, Chavarria said.
While school officials are considering a regional calendar, Vermont is still far away from having a uniform statewide calendar for school holidays. State statute requires school leaders to meet every year and establish a uniform calendar within their districts or regions for the school year, according to Lindsey Hedges, a spokesperson for the Agency of Education. Despite this, variations still exist, she noted.
The Agency of Education “encourages districts to make decisions that reflect the demographics and cultural perspectives of their communities. Recognizing holidays fosters a sense of belonging for students and promotes cultural exchange, enriching the educational experience for all,” Hedges said in an email.
Decisions on calendars are typically made by regional superintendents, who are supposed to . match their regional calendars with the technical schools, according to Jay Nichols, executive director of the Vermont Principals Association.
“To be honest, the VPA believes all students would be better served if we had one common student statewide calendar across all of Vermont,” he wrote in an email. “Regionally, superintendents try to work together to align calendars but that has never been accomplished statewide despite a number of efforts to do so.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: Some Vermont schools mark Diwali as a school holiday for the 1st time.