Put it in the history books

Today is Brooklyn-Queens Day, also known as Anniversary Day, the Thursday in early June when New York City public schoolchildren have the nonsensical day off right before the end of the academic year to commemorate the organization of Protestant Sunday schools (a weird event for public schools to honor). Let it be the final Brooklyn-Queens Day and keep kids in school next June 6.

An excellent idea pushed by Queens Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, with the support of Mayor Adams and Schools Chancellor David Banks and the United Federation of Teachers, is instead to grant a day off for the autumn festival of Diwali, the most important holiday for a few hundred thousand New Yorkers with roots in India. Not every ethnic or religious holiday should come with a day off, but it makes sense to do so for very big ones observed by large populations in the city.

It’s silly that action by Legislature is needed to accomplish such a basic task — but it is, because observance of Brooklyn-Queens Day, originally known as Anniversary Day — is written into state law. Actually, it’s only the students of the two most populous boroughs who are required to have Brooklyn-Queens Day off under statute, but in recent years, Manhattan, Bronx and Staten Island schools have been included and everyone’s gotten to stay home because it makes no sense to have a half-city observance.

Up in Albany, today happens to be the final planned day of the legislative session. Rather than do the Diwali (and, under law, Lunar New Year too, for which the schools already shutter) for Brooklyn-Queens Day swap and do it just for kids in the city, there’s now jockeying over whether or not to do this statewide, and whether to do the trade. Monday night, Rajkumar’s bill was amended to add Diwali without subtracting BQ Day — stretching out the school year further and keeping in place a chopped-up end-of-academic-year calendar.

This doesn’t have to be hard. Erase Brooklyn-Queens Day. Add Diwali. Go home.