Students and staff are getting a four-day weekend for Abraham Lincoln’s Birthday and Presidents’ Day. The final day the Rio Hondo College campus will be open before the four-day weekend kicks off is Thursday.

Rio Hondo College’s Four-Day Presidents’ Day Weekend

Rio Hondo College will be closed starting Friday, Feb. 17, Lincoln’s Birthday. Although it isn’t a State or Federal holiday, the College is observing Lincoln’s Birthday. 

One-hundred-fifty years ago, Lincoln published the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. February is also Black History Month in California. Governor Gavin Newsom made the proclamation on Tuesday, Feb 7. The White House also proclaimed February 2023 National Black History Month on Jan. 31.

The campus’s closure will continue throughout the weekend until Monday, Feb. 20, in observance of Presidents’ Day in California. 

Elsewhere throughout the US, the federal holiday–observed by some US states, but not all–is designated Washington’s Birthday, after the first US President George Washington. The holiday is celebrated every third Monday in February; Washington’s actual birthday falls on Feb. 22.

But California, according to its State Holidays list, is celebrating Presidents’ Day, not President’s Day. The State of California and Rio Hondo College are celebrating and observing multiple former US Presidents, rather than just Washington.

Classes–and the campus’s opening–don’t resume until Tuesday, giving students and staff two back-to-back four-day school weeks in February.

Upcoming and Previous Holidays Observed by Rio Hondo College

After the four-day weekend, the next time the Rio Hondo College campus is closed to students and staff will be during Spring Break, from March 27 to March 31. The final day of classes will be Friday, March 24. Classes will then resume Monday, April 3.

Rio Hondo College recently observed Martin Luther King Jr. Day last month, Monday, Jan. 16. During that period, the Winter 2023 semester was in session. The campus will additionally close during Memorial Day, but the Spring 2023 semester ends the week before.

The observation of Lincoln’s Birthday and Presidents’ Day is the campus’s first-holiday break of the Spring 2023 semester.