LA County public schools, community colleges closed Thursday for Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day
The Los Angeles and Glendale Unified School Districts, as well as the Los Angeles and Glendale Community College Districts, will close campuses on Thursday to observe Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
April 24 is recognized as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day within Los Angeles County to commemorate the 1.5 million victims of the 1915 massacres and deportation campaigns carried out against the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire. Los Angeles is home to the largest Armenian diaspora in the United States and the second-largest in the world.
In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill establishing Genocide Remembrance Day as a state holiday to be observed on April 24 and permitting community colleges and public schools to close in observance. Although this holiday intentionally coincides with Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, it is “a day for all to reflect on past and present genocides…especially those that have felt the impact of these atrocities and groups that have found refuge in California,” according to the legislation. Gov. Newsom also proclaimed April 24 as “A Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide” in 2023 and 2024.
Prior to its official designation as a state holiday, campuses in Glendale have closed on April 24 for years. Roughly 40% of Glendale’s population is of Armenian descent, making the city the most demographically concentrated Armenian diaspora in the world.
Glendale Unified School District has designated April 24 as a non-instructional day since the 2013-14 school year. The 2019 passage of Senate Bill 568 authorized the Glendale Community College District to close on April 24 without facing financial repercussions.
Before the bill was passed, “If (Glendale Community College) were to close on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, it would have lost close to half a million dollars in state funding,” said former state Sen. Anthony Portantino (D-La Cañada Flintridge), who wrote the bill. These losses would have occurred due to differences in the California Education Code at the K-12 and community college levels pertaining to school closures, Portantino explained. “Glendale Unified could add another day at the end of the year to offset the losses, but GCC wasn’t allowed to do that.”
Carissa Coane is a sophomore journalism and mass communications student at Glendale College, and a member of EdSource’s California Student Journalism Corps.
