The Montgomery County school board voted Tuesday to eliminate all references to religious holidays on school calendars, beginning in the 2015-16 school year. That includes Christmas and Easter, as well as Jewish holidays like Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah.

Their excuse? The board superintendent, Joshua Starr, said the board should remove all religious holiday references because local Muslim leaders had requested equal billing for Eid al-Adha.

The Muslim leaders’ request might hold water were there a significant number of Muslim students in the district. However, in response to these leaders’ own request that “families…keep students home on Eid al-Adha,” the absentee rate on the appointed day wasn’t different from any other day’s absentee rate.

Aside from that, though, this board simply chose to surrender the community’s Judeo-Christian heritage in order to avoid controversy.

What lesson is these folks’ timidity teaching those children?