HAPPY BROOKLYN/QUEENS DAY!!!!

The World Famous Flushing Meadow Park

Brooklyn-Queens Day, also known as Anniversary Day, was first held to celebrate Sunday Schools being organized in the two boroughs. Although in an 1893 account schoolchildren were expected to say "Christian things" about their teachers, there is no indication that children whose families followed other faiths were excluded from the celebrations, which included parades and banners. Students and teachers in the two boroughs got an extra holiday and while some people in the other boroughs grumbled a little, no one challenged the idea. Nor is there any indication that anyone took exception to church and state harmoniously commingling, although the observance of Brooklyn-Queens Day, or Anniversary Day, however one chooses to refer to it, took on increasingly secular connotations as the years went by.

For a century and a quarter, students and teachers at schools in Brooklyn and Queens, to the envy of their counterparts in the three other boroughs, got the first Thursday in June (the second Thursday if the first Thursday fell in the same week as the Memorial Day holiday) off from school with no remark from anyone. Then in 2005 the United Federation of Teachers and the New York City Department of Education signed a new contract. Among its provisions was one extending Anniversary Day to schools in Manhattan, Staten Island and The Bronx. As of this year, 2006, students will have a holiday, while teachers will attend sessions fostering professional development.