Most holidays in the U.S. are celebrated throughout the day. Christmas, for example, is an entire day, as are Independence Day and Thanksgiving.  

Halloween, though, is a day (or night) where children stay awake far past normal times and receive candy and treats for fun. Day of the Dead, similarly, is a Latin-American/Hispanic day (or night) where children stay awake far, far past normal times and honor deceased loved ones. 

So why are these back-to-back days – on which sleep is vastly lowered, as argued by The Sleep Foundation — school days in OPS? 

While the argument could be made that only elementary school students need the days off, this also ignores how many people spend Halloween and Day of the Dead ample amounts of time celebrating these holidays. Most starkly for high schoolers, Halloween parties are hard to attend when the next day is a full day of schooling. 

There’s also the downside for teachers. Teachers already have low sleep rates – according to one study by the American School Health Association, 43% of teachers in America get less than six hours of sleep per night. Teachers often have to stay up late at night, and it is unfair to expect them to have to deal with sleep-deprived, sugar-charged children, after at least one night where the teacher may not have gotten as much sleep as usual – which already tends to be very little – due to the nature of nighttime holidays. If they had these days off, they would have more time to prepare for November and would not be forced to deal with uncooperative kids. 

While I personally believe that Halloween should be a day off so parents and children can prepare for the night, I don’t insist on it. I firmly state, however, that at least Day of the Dead should not be a school day.  

Day of the Dead, while primarily a nighttime holiday, often features a long day of preparations, including cooking and event arrangement. It would be far easier for adults if they had the ability to get assistance from their children. As a bonus, if the day was indeed taken off, teachers would not have the “sleep-deprived children” problem nearly as much as Day of the Dead just so happens to be the day after Halloween. 

There is also the added fact that Day of the Dead is a Latin-American/Hispanic holiday. It seems odd that a couple of holidays that are American-only receive time off – such as Thanksgiving, which gets an entire week – but an important holiday for the largest minority at not just Central (35.2% of students), but the whole district (around 40%) of students, is just not represented, not even with a shortened school day. I think that giving Day of the Dead off would show that OPS cares about its Hispanic and Latin-American students. Plus, many students who celebrate Day of the Dead also celebrate Halloween the prior night. It seems off that these students should have to go to school on two days in a row many of them would consider holidays. 

Giving OPS students Halloween and at least Day of the Dead off holds only benefits for all the students and teachers, and there is no reason to not do so immediately.