Connecticut School District Removes Columbus Day, Veterans Day from School Calendar
A school district in Connecticut is removing both Veterans Day and Columbus Day as official school holidays for the next two academic years.
The Stamford Public Schools school board has officially voted to eliminate these two holidays for its 2024-25 and 2025-26 academic years. Students will be required to attend school on these days, despite them being federally recognized holidays.
Following this decision, many community members expressed their frustration with the school district. Connecticut residents, which is largely comprised of Italian-Americans, have expressed strong opposition to this decision to not officially observe Columbus Day.
Alfred Fusco, a veteran and founding member of the Stamford chapter of UNICO, an Italian-American service organization, described the decision as a “gut punch.” Fusco emphasized the historical significance of Columbus Day, explaining to ABC 7 New York that it marked a pivotal moment in human history, despite acknowledging the controversies surrounding it.
“A lot of bad things happened in this country after the discovery, let’s not whitewash it. I said what happened on October 12, 1492, the discovery of America, was the most significant event in the history of the human race,” Fusco said in an open letter to the school board.
The removal of Columbus Day echoes previous tensions in Connecticut regarding the celebration of Christopher Columbus. In 2020, a well-known statue of Christopher Columbus in New Haven, erected in 1892, was removed following repeated acts of vandalism, including graffiti that denounced Columbus as a colonizer. Protestors wrote the phrase “kill the colonizer” in paint on the base of the statue.
The school board defended its decision by citing the need to shorten the school calendar, arguing that the significance of these holidays could still be integrated into classroom curriculums. But many presume that this decision was politically motivated and part of the left-wing sentiment that the discovery of the Americas by Columbus should be condemned, not applauded.
