Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

All can rest at ease, holidays restored

When citizens protested the Hillsborough schools' new calendar, board members could have thanked them and moved on.

By SUE CARLTON
Published November 10, 2005

Well, thank goodness.

We apparently no longer need to worry about hurricanes, or any other sort of wrath from on high, now that the Hillsborough County School Board has reversed its decision to take religious holidays off the school calendar.

Two weeks ago, the same board made the appropriate decision to make the calendar fair to everyone by no longer tying student holidays to Yom Kippur, Good Friday or the Monday after Easter (and exactly what religious holiday is that, anyway?) It's important to note here that there would have been no penalty for students who took those days off -- no tests, no missed field trips, no unexcused absences.

Then came the attack of the angry e-mails and the meddling of Hillsborough Commissioner Brian Blair, who is apparently trying to out-Ronda Ronda Storms in making us look dumb on a national level.

At this week's meeting, school board members listened to Blair and other protesting citizens, some preaching fire and brimstone. One speaker even intimated that a hurricane could well hit us next time should the school board not see the light.

So what happened next? Did the board thank all these people for their time and concern, explain the logic and legality of their position, not to mention that whole separation-of-church-and-state thing, and then stay the course? Nope. Four members who previously voted for the secular calendar caved, and the religious holiday vacation days are back.

I kept thinking there must be some serious confusion over the facts here, or intelligent people wouldn't be acting like the board was trying to cancel Christmas and serve up the Easter Bunny on a turkey platter. Or that people are just resistant to changing tradition. But some motives seem darker.

This started when local Muslims asked to have Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan, included as a school holiday. The key word is included; No one was asking to cancel Christian and Jewish holidays.

But a study deemed it more fair to go to a secular calendar. Schools aren't supposed to close for religious reasons, anyway, though they can for practical ones, such as the fact that if they had classes on Christmas Day hardly anyone would show up. Pinellas County went to this kind of calendar a few years back with barely a ripple. The churches did not go out of business. Hurricane Charley veered south.

Some people didn't see it that way. E-mails to the school board said a Christian country should have Christian holidays (which, by the way, we do.) A few threw "Judeo-Christian" in there for good measure. More disturbing was an undercurrent accusing Muslims of trying to ruin things for everyone else.

From e-mails sent to the school board:

"I am sick of this. Either adopt my country's founding principles and Christian heritage or leave."

"Please do not bow to Muslim pressure. If they want special religious holidays, let them go back to their country of origin!...Who is next? Wickens, Scientologists, Voodoo?"

Some threats weren't even veiled.

"If you - as a Board - take this stance, then be assured that the Christian majority will do everything in its power to ensure that you are voted out of leadership. And the moral decline in our schools will rest solely and squarely upon your shoulders."

Hard as it was to see the school board blink, it was almost worse to watch Blair grandstand. At one point, he actually said, "This is America, and if you don't like the rules of America, and the principles, the laws, the holidays, you know, find another place to live."

The former professional wrestler once known as a "Killer Bee" went on Fox News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor to preach the cause. At the school board meeting, he refused to stop talking after being asked a question by a board member. (Surely he's familiar with respect at public meetings. Maybe a ref with a whistle would have helped.)

So we're back to the old calendar, having missed a chance to move forward without taking anything away from anyone. Oh, well. At least next year I won't have to buy all that bottled water.

Sue Carlton can be reached at carlton@sptimes.com

[Last modified November 10, 2005, 18:47:38]