AB 268 amends the Education Code’s list of days on which California community colleges may be closed to recognize Diwali as a named holiday and to set related calendar rules. The change sits alongside existing provisions that let districts adopt other optional closures and preserves limits on reducing the minimum number of instructional days.
This is a policy change that affects how districts plan academic calendars and negotiate with employee representatives. It does not impose a uniform statewide closure; instead, it changes the statutory menu of holidays and leaves implementation decisions to local governing boards and existing bargaining processes.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill adds Diwali — defined as the 15th day of the month of Kartik in the Hindu lunar calendar — to the list of holidays a community college may close for, and it confirms related options for other special observances. It keeps closures tied to local decisions rather than mandating a statewide shutdown.
Who It Affects
Governing boards of community college districts, campus registrars and academic schedulers, and employee bargaining units (faculty and classified staff) will carry primary responsibility for implementing any Diwali closures. Students, adjuncts, payroll and student services staff will see operational impacts when districts choose to close.
Why It Matters
By adding a named, movable religious holiday to the statute, the law creates recurring calendar variability (Diwali’s date shifts by year) that districts must negotiate into local agreements and academic planning. The statutory change also formalizes recognition of a cultural observance in law — a precedent other districts and sectors may notice.
More articles like this one.
A weekly email with all the latest developments on this topic.
What This Bill Actually Does
AB 268 expands the Education Code’s holiday roster by naming Diwali (the 15th day of Kartik in the Hindu lunar calendar) as an event on which community colleges may close. The statute does not impose a uniform closure across the system; instead, it treats Diwali like several other optional observances that a district may adopt if its governing board agrees to close the campus for that date through the locally applicable negotiation process.
Practically, the bill ties implementation to the existing collective bargaining framework referenced in the Education Code: districts that want to close for Diwali must reach the appropriate local agreement with employee representatives. That places the detail work — whether the day is paid, whether classes are made up, and how adjuncts are handled — into memoranda of understanding (MOUs) or other negotiated instruments rather than into statutory detail.Because Diwali follows a lunar calendar, its date shifts from year to year; the law anticipates that by treating Diwali as a movable observance and by giving districts rules for observing it if it coincides with other holidays or weekdays.
The bill also leaves intact long-standing provisions that govern how federal holidays interact with college closures, special observances such as Cesar Chavez Day or Native American Day (which are optional by local agreement), and a provision that the governing board may not reduce the district’s minimum number of instructional days.From an operations perspective, the statute creates predictable negotiation points: bargaining teams must decide whether to include Diwali as a closed day, how to record instructional minutes, how to treat payroll for hourly or adjunct staff, and how to communicate calendar changes to students and partner institutions. The law delegates the contentious details to local negotiation rather than prescribing them, which both preserves local control and guarantees that implementation will vary across districts.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill names Diwali explicitly as “the 15th day of the month of Kartik in the Hindu lunar calendar” and places it in the list of days on which a community college may close.
Closure for Diwali is optional and requires agreement by the district governing board pursuant to a memorandum of understanding reached under Chapter 10.7 (commencing with Section 3540) of the Government Code — i.e.
it must be negotiated with employee representatives.
The statute provides a rule for when Lunar New Year replaces Lincoln Day or Washington Day: a district may swap one of those specified February closures for the second (or third, if an intercalary month intervenes) new moon following the winter solstice, observing Lunar New Year on a preceding or following weekday if it falls on another holiday.
The bill groups Diwali with other optional observances that already require local agreement, and it includes a separate Glendale-specific clause allowing Glendale Community College to adopt Genocide Remembrance Day by MOU.
The section expressly forbids interpreting the change to authorize districts to reduce the minimum number of instructional days for the college year, so any Diwali closure must be reconciled with state-day/minimum-instruction rules.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Adds Diwali and optional observances via local agreement
This subsection is the vehicle that inserts Diwali into the Education Code’s list of nonmandatory closures. It couples Diwali with other optional observances — Genocide Remembrance Day and Native American Day — and conditions any closure on a governing board decision reached through a MOU under the Government Code’s collective bargaining chapter. The practical implication: local labor negotiations control whether a campus closes, not the statute’s mere listing.
Allows Lunar New Year to replace certain February holidays
The provision allows a district, via MOU, to replace closing for Lincoln Day or Washington Day with closing for Lunar New Year as defined by the second (or third, in leap-month years) new moon after the winter solstice. It also directs districts to observe Lunar New Year on a nearby weekday if the lunar date coincides with another holiday. That creates an explicit pathway for districts with sizable Asian or Pacific Islander student populations to align closures with Lunar New Year, while preserving the statutory dates as the default.
Optional Cesar Chavez and Glendale Genocide Remembrance Day rules remain MOU-based
These subsections confirm existing practice for other optional observances: Cesar Chavez Day can be adopted systemwide only if the governing board agrees by MOU, and Glendale Community College has an explicit carve‑out to adopt Genocide Remembrance Day via MOU. Including these alongside Diwali signals that the bill’s approach is to expand the menu of negotiated closures rather than to create mandatory uniform holidays.
Protects minimum instructional days
This short but consequential clause prevents any interpretation that would let a district reduce the number of required instructional days in the academic year. Districts that elect to close for Diwali must therefore restructure calendars (for example, by rescheduling intersession days or adjusting schedules) if closing would otherwise push them below statutory minima.
Existing contractual supremacy for MLK Day retained
This section preserves a prior rule: any preexisting contract provision that adds an observance for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day controls over the statute until the contract ends or the parties agree otherwise. Its inclusion in the same statutory section underscores that many holiday observance issues are already subject to local contract terms — a pattern the bill extends to Diwali.
This bill is one of many.
Codify tracks hundreds of bills on Education across all five countries.
Explore Education in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Students and community members who observe Diwali: Named recognition in statute increases the availability of a formal day off where local agreements are reached, improving cultural accommodation and campus inclusion in districts that adopt the closure.
- Native and other cultural communities: The law groups Diwali with Native American Day and Genocide Remembrance Day, giving local communities a clearer statutory path to request and negotiate calendar recognition.
- Districts seeking local flexibility: Governing boards retain control to negotiate closures that match local demographics and can use MOUs to build consistent policies that fit instructional needs and labor agreements.
Who Bears the Cost
- Community college districts and campus administrators: They must manage academic-calendar adjustments, ensure compliance with minimum instructional days, and handle operational logistics (rescheduling classes, adjusting payroll, altering services).
- Unions and bargaining teams: Employee representatives must negotiate the terms of any closure (paid status, makeup days, adjunct compensation), which can consume bargaining bandwidth and create trade-offs in other contract areas.
- Hourly and adjunct instructors: These workers may face lost pay or make-up obligations depending on local MOUs; the statute leaves pay-status and make-up arrangements to negotiation rather than establishing default protections.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is recognition versus uniformity: the bill advances cultural recognition by adding a movable religious observance to the statutory holiday menu while preserving local control, but that localism generates inconsistent student and employee outcomes and scheduling complexity that the statute purposely leaves to negotiation rather than resolving at the state level.
The bill takes a deliberately local approach: it names Diwali but does not standardize pay, makeup days, or instructional-minute accounting for that closure. That delegation reduces the chance of legal challenges to a systemwide religious holiday but creates a patchwork of outcomes across districts.
The most immediate implementation issue is calendar mechanics: Diwali’s date shifts annually under the Hindu lunar calendar, so registrars and academic schedulers must build conversion processes into multi-year calendars and coordinate around census, withdrawal, and finals dates.
AB 268 also leaves significant operational ambiguity to bargaining. The statute requires a MOU-based decision but does not specify whether a Diwali closure constitutes a paid holiday for all classifications, how sick or vacation leave interacts with the day, or how adjuncts or hourly classified employees are compensated.
Those questions create predictable bargaining friction and disparate treatment risk: neighboring districts could take different approaches, affecting students and staff who work or transfer between them. Finally, reconciling Diwali closures with state minimum‑day requirements will force districts to change other calendar elements, potentially shifting burdens (for example, adding evening or weekend sessions) rather than removing instructional obligations.
Try it yourself.
Ask a question in plain English, or pick a topic below. Results in seconds.