Opinion: Lunar New Year needs to be acknowledged in Wayland

How come the obvious doesn’t seem obvious to the Wayland Public Schools administration?

Recently, on Feb. 16, freshmen Jordynn Lee and Eunjee Kang sent out an email with a petition to make Lunar New Year an official holiday in the Wayland Public Schools district. This petition calls for the Wayland school district to change their current policy surrounding Lunar New Year. The petition is currently aiming for 1,000 signatures and calls for the Wayland school district to give students and staff the day off and make Lunar New Year an “official” school holiday.

To call this petition important would be an understatement. This petition is crucial to many members of the Asian American community in our school district, students and staff alike. The recognition of Lunar New Year as an official holiday by our school system would help many Asian Americans in our schools feel seen, like the other minority students who are given the chance to celebrate their holidays. Recognizing Lunar New Year as an official holiday validates the Asian American students and staff who celebrate and show that they too are integral members of the Wayland Public Schools.

I, personally, and wholeheartedly endorse this petition. As an Asian American student myself, I think that this petition is necessary to provide Asian American students and staff with an opportunity to celebrate a holiday that’s very important to our culture. The Wayland school district should show the same respect for Lunar New Year as it does for the other minority holidays we celebrate.

In addition, Wayland wouldn’t be alone in making Lunar New Year an official holiday. Several other school districts have policies surrounding Lunar New Year and mark the Lunar New Year as a major cultural holiday. School districts including Boston, Newton and Andover have guidelines that let teachers know not to assign homework, tests, projects or other work around Lunar New Year so that students can comfortably celebrate the holiday while other districts such as Hopkinton have made Lunar New Year an official, no-school holiday.

Lunar New Year is arguably the most significant holiday in the calendar year for many Asian Americans, the largest minority population in the Wayland Public School system, and yet, the Wayland school district doesn’t officially recognize Lunar New Year as a holiday. This creates a situation in which the students who celebrate the holiday will often have to either delay in celebrating it, or, as Lee put it, feel “forced to choose between our most important holiday [and] our academic obligations”.

Several students I’ve talked to who want to take a day off to celebrate the holiday have expressed their concerns in doing so. With the school’s current policy surrounding Lunar New Year, students have to call in absent from school and miss a whole day of classes. This has prompted several students to feel like they can’t celebrate this very important holiday at the risk of falling behind in school.

This is something that I understand well and sympathize with. Missing school almost always entails catching yourself up on missed class material, having to make up work and is a great inconvenience. As such, many students feel like they can’t miss a day of school.

In this way, the non-recognition of Lunar New Year as an official holiday essentially prohibits Asian American students and staff from participating in a significant part of their culture. This is, plainly put, something that no one should have to worry about. Just as we get Christmas and the Gregorian New Year off from school, Wayland Public Schools should give us Lunar New Year off as well so that Asian American students and staff can comfortably celebrate without having to worry about falling behind in school.

I believe that the Wayland Public Schools should change their policy surrounding Lunar New Year. Everyone deserves the right to celebrate their culture and celebrate the holidays which are important to them, and we shouldn’t need a petition to convince our schools of this obvious fact. Sometimes, though, you just have to stand up for what’s right. So sign the petition, raise awareness about it, and let’s hope that in the future, Asian American students will be able to freely celebrate Lunar New Year, without any worries.