The school calendar is not religiously biased toward Christianity. Public schools all across the country have to make decisions based on many different and sometimes difficult factors, when they add religion to the mix, things can get tricky.

According to a poll, in the United States alone, 83 percent of the population is Christian, 13 percent do not practice religion, and only four percent make up all non-Christian religions combined. Religion is important to many people. While the majority of the population is Christian, the rest of the population is not and the religion that they believe in is just as important.

“There are a lot of different religions, religion is religion and people shouldn’t be concerned about the calendar,” senior Hanad Isse said.

People see religion as part of their identity and think it is one of the most important things, while others who are not religious do not see it as very important. Many different religion beliefs can be found at public schools, the school will always try to be religiously fair.

“The state requires 165 days of school. We have 172 student contact days that the calendar committee has to work with. When the committee gets together they look at the community and look at all the different kinds of feedback that comes in from students, parents and staff and then come together to make a decision,” Principal Rob Bach said.

The school needs a certain amount of days reserved in case of unexpected bad weather, issues that restrict school from progressing as normal and inner district training days.

The calendar committee has a lot of things they need to take into consideration when they create the calendar. The committee takes polls of the students, parents and staff from the past year. They also survey the community to know who will be attending the school in the upcoming year, based on the information they collect, they make decisions beneficial for the majority of the students.

“Christmas is obviously a specific religious term, we refer to it as winter break because we know that not everyone celebrates Christmas,” Principal Bach said.

Schools try their hardest to make sure everyone feels included. They know their students and try to base their clubs, activities and calendar off of the largest percentage of students in those groups that they have.

Although there are many schools across the country who are dealing with unhappy students who want to celebrate their own religious days, if there is a large enough group of students who are upset, there needs to be a change and the school needs to support them.

It’s the schools job to understand and include its students. Since Christianity is the most common religion in the United States, a lot of the time it can feel a little unfair, but the school should not make any changes to the calendar.