For students across New York, the upcoming Year of the Snake will start off with a bit more of a bang.
Public schools across the state will be celebrating the Lunar New Year on Jan. 29 as an official holiday for the first time. This also makes New York the first state to mandate school closures for the occasion. Last year, the state holiday’s inception fell on a Saturday, and students weren’t given an additional day off.
New York Assemblymember Grace Lee, who led efforts to pass a bill that resulted in the change, told NBC News that the holiday is an opportunity for students of all backgrounds to reflect and learn about Asian traditions.
“Recognizing Lunar New Year as a statewide holiday is sending a message to Asian Americans, and to all New Yorkers, that Asian Americans are New Yorkers, and that we belong here,” Lee, who’s also co-chair of the Assembly’s Asian Pacific American Task Force, said. “I think it’s also a recognition for the many contributions that Asian Americans have made to New York’s history in the nearly 200 years since we’ve been here.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation in September 2023 putting the mandate into effect. The Lunar New Year — which includes Chinese New Year, Seollal in Korea, Tet in Vietnam and more — begins at the end of the month and kicks off more than two weeks of festivities. Celebrated by Chinese diasporas and other East Asian populations as well as the Vietnamese, the occasion is also largely considered the most important holiday of the year for these cultures.
New York has long been home to a significant Asian American population, who are currently the fastest-growing racial demographic in the state. About 10% of students are Asian American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, according to public school enrollment data from the 2023-2024 school year. That figure jumps to 18.7% when looking at New York City schools, where the racial group outnumbers white students.
While schools citywide began recognizing the holiday roughly seven years ago, Lee, who was elected to the Assembly in 2022, says it’s taken more Asian Americans in state leadership for the “push that it needed” to make changes across New York.
“I came into the state Legislature at a historic moment for New York,” Lee, whose district includes Chinatown, said. “We had a record number of Asian American legislators in both the State Assembly and the State Senate, and I think that representation really matters.”
