I read with interest that the Baltimore County school board has rejected a proposal to close schools on Muslim holidays during the academic year ("Baltimore County school board votes against closing for Muslim holidays," Aug. 23).
I strongly suspect that if the board had agreed to that proposal, Christians would have been next in requesting that Good Friday be put on the holiday calendar as well.
If there were cries of "injustice" after the rejection of the Muslim proposal, there would have been even louder howls from Christians, whose holiest holidays were stricken from the calendar long ago.
The idea that school holidays should be secular rather than religious seems a very just solution for this concern.
However, if there calls for religious holidays continue, why not have "floating holidays" like they have in private industry?
Each family could choose two days in addition to the holidays proposed by the school district and take those days off whenever they wanted.
This would have to come with some administrative oversight, since each student would have a "holiday account" that would be debited every time they took a day off. They would also have to have a written note from a parent.
Some might say that students and their families would use their holiday account to take a vacation, but that's their choice as long as they kept the arrangement "secular" and never claimed they would only use their holiday for religious purposes.
This may not be a perfect solution, but it's one that might spare the school board further involvement in holiday requests related to religious obligations.
Chris Greco, Perry Hall