Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Heavily-Jewish Maryland Public Schools Will Stay Closed On High Holidays

(JTA) — Schools will remain closed on the High Holidays in Baltimore County, the home to several large Jewish communities, for the 2018-19 school year following an extended debate.

The Baltimore County school board on Tuesday night voted 9-3 to approve the academic calendar for the next term with the district closing on the first day of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, as it has for the past two decades.

The debate centered on keeping the schools open for the High Holidays or having an extended break in the spring around Easter.

The calendar had to be reworked following an order by Gov. Larry Hogan that Maryland public schools must begin after Labor Day and end by June 15. The requirement is aimed at extending the summer and boosting state tourism, the Baltimore Sun reported.

The Baltimore Jewish Council and the Baltimore County PTA board of directors opposed opening schools on the Jewish holidays, according to the newspaper.

A school board member estimated that it would cost the school system up to $500,000 to pay for the substitute teachers needed to fill in for Jewish teachers who take off on the Jewish holidays.

“It’s not a religious issue. It’s a question of economics,” school board member David Uhlfelder said at Tuesday’s meeting.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.