The Brief

Students are wrapping up their semesters and slowly lapsing into holiday mode.

But as some families come together to celebrate federal and state-recognized holidays, others participate in religious and cultural celebrations that take place on school days, raising questions about how to ensure students can participate in rituals and cultural celebrations while keeping up with their schoolwork.

“If [Indigenous students] are at a ceremony or in [a] roundhouse all night dancing for their ceremonies, they’re likely to be tired and absent from school on Mondays,” said Ashley Crystal Rojas, the policy director for Indigenous Justice. “It’s really important that our young people not feel the pressure to choose between academic success and their cultural identity.”

Here’s what to know about state and federal holidays, absences and accommodations.

What are the California state and federal holidays? 

• New Year’s Day  
• Martin Luther King Jr. Day
• Presidents Day
• Cesar Chavez Day 
• Memorial Day
• Juneteenth 
• Independence Day
• Labor Day
• Veterans Day
• Columbus Day/Indigenous Peoples Day
• Thanksgiving Day
• Day after Thanksgiving 
• Christmas Day 

There are also several holidays recognized by the California education code, some of which school districts choose to observe, including Genocide Remembrance Day and Native American Day. And in October, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 268 into law, which adds Diwali — a festival of lights observed by Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jains — to the list of state holidays beginning in 2026, which districts can choose to observe.

Can my child take a holiday off that isn’t a state holiday? 

Yes, according to California’s education code, observing religious holidays — and participating in cultural ceremonies and events — are among the reasons students can take off from school and have it count as an excused absence.

But there are limits. For instance, students cannot miss more than one school day per semester to attend religious retreats.

What are some holidays that students may consider taking off? 

It entirely depends on individual family practices and can vary widely. Some include:

• Good Friday
• Yom Kippur
• Rosh Hashanah
• Eid al-Fitr 
• Eid al-Adha
• Holi 
• Vesak
• Lunar New Year 
• Kwanzaa
• Indigenous rituals connected to various seasons 

What should I do if my child needs to miss a day of school to celebrate a holiday? 

For any holiday or observance, it is best to contact your child’s school administration in advance, notify them of the absence and make sure they understand it is for religious and/or cultural reasons that are excused and justified.

At Indigenous Justice, a nonprofit focused on the self-determination of Indigenous people, Rojas said, they often work with families to understand their rights, including on school absences.

“There’s a really inconsistent implementation across school sites,” Rojas said, noting that even with state and federal protections, not all campus administrators are receptive to students’ needs.

Sometimes, Rojas added, it can be helpful to copy additional administrators on correspondence, including the principal or area superintendent.

Parents or their students should contact teachers to ensure plans are in place for them to make up any missed work and assessments.

Will the student be able to make up any work or exams?  

Yes, because the days away from school count as excused absences. Students are entitled to opportunities to make up for missed work and assessments without any penalty in grade or loss in credit.

According to the state education code, teachers should “determine which tests and assignments shall be reasonably equivalent to, but not necessarily identical to, the tests and assignments that the pupil missed during the absence.”

Do schools provide accommodations for students who participate in religious fasting, such as Ramadan?

Yes, schools in California provide K-12 students participating in religious fasting accommodations for physical education under Assembly Bill 2377.

To access support, provide written documentation to a school principal and notify them of your child’s participation, and the student should be granted credit for instructional time during the accommodation period.

Often described as housing of last resort for some of the city’s poorest renters, single-room occupancy buildings in Los Angeles are operating at a financial loss — and losing more money every year.

That’s according to a November report from Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable housing nonprofit. The report surveyed 39 buildings across California. It found that only two — both located in San Francisco — have positive cash flow.

All of the L.A.-area properties are run by organizations that keep buildings financially afloat by digging into their own budgets, making up for rental income that isn’t enough to cover operating costs.

“Owners that are carrying these properties are really trying to make them work,” said Marc Tousignant, who oversees vulnerable populations for Enterprise’s Southern California market. “They're really at the front lines of ending homelessness.”

Losses have tripled

The buildings surveyed in the report contained more than 3,000 single-room occupancy units in total. These are bare-bones apartments, usually just a bedroom without a private bathroom or kitchen.

Many are located in old residential hotels, often in downtown L.A.’s Skid Row neighborhood.

The report found building owners have needed to triple the amount of money they’re advancing per unit over the last five years. Losses cost organizations an average of $971 per unit in 2020. Now, that figure is up to $2,866 per unit.

Some, like the storied Cecil Hotel, have struggled to attract tenants. The report found an average vacancy rate of 20% in the surveyed buildings. Some of the aging properties are unattractive to prospective tenants because of deferred maintenance or damage caused by residents with untreated mental health issues.

“There have been discussions around, should we just abandon this model and convert them completely?” Tousignant said. “But they are really serving, I think, an important role.”

What could turn them around?

The two buildings in San Francisco that are financially healthy both have project-based vouchers through the city’s Section 8 program. These vouchers help tenants pay for rents in the building, and the vouchers cannot be transferred to other properties.

Tousignant said this approach could help improve the financial outlook for buildings in L.A.

“Unfortunately, in L.A., we haven't really been dedicating any new project-based vouchers to older or existing buildings,” he said. “They've really been going towards newer buildings.”

Rehabilitation is another approach that could improve vacancy rates at the buildings. The estimated cost of fixing up each single-room occupancy unit was $165,000 on average, according to the report. Some of those plans could involve converting units into studio apartments, complete with kitchen and bathroom facilities — though that could involve reducing a building’s total number of units.

“It's this sort of trade off,” Tousignant said. “What's more important? Making these complete units or losing a little bit of affordability in terms of the amount of units?”

Tousignant said if the affordable housing field doesn’t find solutions to these problems, more buildings could find themselves in court-ordered receivership, with tenants facing an uncertain future.

That’s the situation the Skid Row Housing Trust found itself in, before developer Leo Pustilnikov bought its troubled portfolio of buildings.

The federal government has announced the results of the latest round of Medicare drug price negotiations: 15 lower drug prices for Medicare to go into effect in 2027.

Medicare will get a 71% discount on Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus, blockbuster drugs for obesity and Type 2 diabetes that have current list prices of around a thousand dollars a month.

The negotiations also included drugs for asthma, breast cancer and leukemia. The discounts ranged from 38% for Austedo, which treats Huntington's disease, to 85% for Janumet for Type 2 diabetes.

"President Trump directed us to stop at nothing to lower health care costs for the American people," said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in a press release. "As we work to Make America Healthy Again, we will use every tool at our disposal to deliver affordable health care to seniors."

The program that covers drugs for more than 50 million seniors negotiated its first batch of drug prices last year, after the passage of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.

A provision of that law, passed without Republican support, ended Medicare's 20-year ban on negotiating drug prices.

Negotiations for this second batch of 15 drugs wrapped up at the end of October.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) say the new, lower Medicare prices would have saved the program $12 billion dollars if the lower negotiated prices had been in effect in 2024.

The latest negotiated prices are great news for taxpayers and patients, says Dr. Benjamin Rome, health policy researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston. Federal taxpayers fund much of Medicare, but beneficiaries also must pay copays and coinsurance.

"This is more savings than the first round, but a lot of that has to do with the nature of the drugs being negotiated this year and probably some learning from experience," he says.

Drugs were selected earlier this year based on criteria written into the law. They had to have no generic or biosimilar competition, account for a high amount of Medicare spending and be on the market for a number of years.

The lower Ozempic and Wegovy prices follow a separate deal the Trump administration announced on Nov. 6 with Novo Nordisk, which makes both drugs.

That deal was part of the president's push to get drug companies to voluntarily lower their U.S. prices to match those in other developed countries.

But, confusingly, the discounts from the Medicare negotiations were less significant than what Novo Nordisk agreed to give Medicare as part of the Nov. 6 deal.

That previous deal set a price of $245 dollars a month for Ozempic and Wegovy. But according to the negotiated prices announced this week, the prices of Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus — the company's Type 2 diabetes pill — will be $274 a month.

"It's not clear why Novo [Nordisk] would promise a different price in two different venues," Rome says.

In a company statement, Novo Nordisk explained that it "look[s] forward to additional clarity from CMS on how pricing and coverage will work."

The separate Trump Administration deal "reflects a broader effort to expand access to obesity care across Medicare and Medicaid," the statement said.

(The deal expanded access in those two programs to the drugs to people with a body mass index of over 35 and people with BMIs above 27 who have additional health conditions. But the details of exactly how this will work remain unclear.)

The Novo Nordisk statement affirmed that the company is committed to advocating for affordable access to its medications, but "we continue to have serious concerns about the Inflation Reduction Act's impact on patients and remain opposed to government price setting."

AARP, an advocacy group for the 125 million Americans who are 50 and older, was pleased with the results of the negotiations.

"Today's announcement marks yet another significant next step forward in our long-standing efforts to lower prescription drug prices," AARP's CEO Dr. Myechia Minter-Jordan said in a statement.

"Older Americans across the political spectrum consistently say lower drug prices are a top priority, and these negotiated prices will bring meaningful relief to millions of people on Medicare."

Copyright 2025 NPR

This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on Nov. 26, 2025.

Adventist Health White Memorial says it is taking steps to reaffirm its commitment to patient privacy in the face of ICE raids — including posting signs clarifying how law enforcement officers and immigration agents interact with patients.

The announcement comes after reports that hospital administrators allowed federal immigration agents to interfere in medical decisions and block doctors from properly treating detainees who need emergency care.

The reporting alarmed many in the community, who are calling for hospital administrators to uphold patient privacy and ensure staff can advocate for patients without retaliation. An ICE Out of White Memorial petition has garnered hundreds of signatures, organizers said.

In a Nov. 21 news release, Adventist Health released a six-point statement outlining policies to protect patients and support staff. The measures state that staff can speak up if patient rights are violated, and that they will not face retaliation for “requesting ICE agents to step away.” Staff are encouraged to report any violations of patient rights, according to the release.

The statement also said nursing and clinical care teams “routinely ask ICE agents to leave the room during care so patients can maintain privacy and feel safe when receiving medical care.”

“We support our staff when they speak up for patients’ needs,” it said, adding that the hospital does not prohibit contact with patient families. “We have case management and escalation processes for our physicians and staff to be able to contact families and coordinate care,” according to the news release.

The statement follows reporting by LAist that found that doctors believe hospital administrators were allowing ICE to call the shots and were blocking doctors from properly treating detainees who need emergency care. The hospital, which is part of a network of private, nonprofit hospitals affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, has operated in Boyle Heights for more than 100 years.

LAist’s reporting found that White Memorial staff who stand up to immigration agents – either by asking them to identify themselves or to step out of the room during a patient examination – do so at their own peril and are unsure that the hospital has their back if a conflict arises. Doctors also said they have been barred from reaching out to family members, either to collect necessary medical information, or simply to let family members know about a loved one.

The new statement was released on Friday, but doctors told Boyle Heights Beat that ICE is still interfering with patient care — in seeming contradiction to Adventist Health’s Nov. 21 news release. Physicians say they have been told they must go through the hospital’s case management system to speak with a patient’s family members. The case management system then contacts ICE for permission, doctors said. ICE can say no, they said.

Community advocates have voiced concern about the hospital’s approach and say this recent statement, while welcomed, doesn’t go far enough.

Raquel Roman, executive director of Proyecto Pastoral, which operates the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network, said that while the organization recognizes White Memorial’s efforts, they want the hospital to “set clear rules prohibiting agents from entering patient care areas.”

“At a time when moral clarity is needed, leaving these decisions to individual care teams creates grave ambiguity.
Hospitals need to be havens of healing,” Roman said.

“When people are scared to seek life-saving care, there is no impartial position.
We cherish our collaboration with White Memorial. But we can’t stand by and watch while our neighbors have to decide between their safety and health,” she added.

Adventist Health White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights.

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Steve Saldivar

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The LA Local

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The news release also underscores the community’s clout following outrage over the doctors’ complaints.

Since the story was published, community stakeholders who are part of the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network presented demands at a Nov. 5 meeting with hospital leaders, including Kerry Heinrich, the president and chief executive officer of Adventist Health System, and John Raffoul, president of Adventist Health White Memorial.

As part of those demands, the network — which is made up of residents and community leaders from organizations like Legacy LA, InnerCity Struggle and Centro CSO — wants immigration agents out of patient rooms during medical consultations and procedures.

In response, White Memorial, in a Nov. 12 memo, thanked community leaders for sharing their concerns and outlined five key points, which noted that every patient’s privacy is protected, that doctors and nurses make care decisions together with patients, that law enforcement officers can’t interfere with medical care, and that when there is a medical reason to contact a family, “our team can do that through the right process.”

Members of the Boyle Heights Immigrant Rights Network said the memo fell short. While a “good first attempt,” they said it contained “a lot of gray area” and was doing the “bare minimum.” As a hospital, “they already should be protecting patients’ privacy,” said Henry Perez, executive director of InnerCity Struggle.

Adventist Health said the statement combines existing practices with recent changes made in response to community concerns. The updated signage referenced in the news release will be printed and posted by Monday evening, they said.

“We have and will continue to review our policies and practices – including those guiding detainee and patient privacy – so that every patient, family member, and staff member at White Memorial feels safe and respected in our hospital,” according to the press release.