A concession to faith

Hillsborough County schools create a day off on next year's calendar to address the concerns of Jewish staff and students about using personal days and missing assignments during the High Holy Days.

By SHARON TUBBS

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 4, 2001

For years, many Jewish people felt the Hillsborough County public schools calendar was unfair to them.

Jewish doctrine says families should be worshiping at synagogue on the High Holy Days, Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana. But schools sometimes scheduled exams and sports events on or near the holidays, forcing students to choose between their faith and school activities. Jewish teachers had to use personal days to take the time off.

Christians had no such conflicts. Come Christmas and Easter, Christian students missed no tests and Christian teachers used no personal days because the entire school system shut down.

Then, two weeks ago, the Hillsborough School Board quietly became the first in the Tampa Bay area to vote to shut down school this fall on Yom Kippur. It was a milestone for the Jewish community in Hillsborough, which makes up about 2.5 percent of the county's population.

The School Board had been hearing the objections of the Jewish community for years, but it had never changed the schedule.

So, what made the difference this time?

Teachers speak out

The issue surfaced this year after a change in the school calendar.

Traditionally, spring break has fallen the week before Easter in Hillsborough County. Though the vacation was always known as spring break, many people in the school system thought of it as the Easter break.

But when the 2000-2001 school calendar was announced last year, there was a change -- an unfair one, as far as some Jewish teachers were concerned.

Schedule planners moved spring break to the end of the third quarter in March, heeding School Board members who felt it should not fall in the middle of a grading period. For the first time in years, then, spring break would not fall the week before Easter.

Here's what upset some Jewish teachers: the district also approved a new four-day weekend around Easter. For the 2000-2001 school year, Good Friday and the Monday after Easter have been deemed "non-student days."

To Jewish teachers, the school district's true intent was clear -- to free up Christians for Good Friday and Easter. Jews did not receive the same consideration on their High Holy Days. It was, they felt, a classic case of schedule gerrymandering.

"I just was taken aback," said Wharton High School art teacher Judy Oliveri, who is Jewish. "It was so obvious."

Oliveri had long believed the schedule wasn't fair to Jewish people. She had mentioned her concerns to school administrators and the Hillsborough Classroom Teachers Association, to no avail.

The latest development inspired Oliveri and others to organize a grass roots campaign for change.

The Jewish teachers called School Board members and members of the district's calendar committee, which maps out the schedule the School Board votes on.

Monica Nannis, another teacher at Wharton, was raised in the Roman Catholic and Episcopal churches, but she married an observant Jew last March and plans to convert. In a letter to School Board members, Nannis wrote:

"I was outraged that the School Board, who pride themselves on maintaining equity and tolerance in the workplace, would disregard the religious rights, needs and wants of its faculty."

But the dispute wasn't just about faith. It was also about money.

Oliveri's friend Jane Robbins, a teacher at Sickles High, is approaching retirement after nearly 31 years. When teachers retire, the district pays them for unused personal days. Robbins calculated that if she had not used personal days for Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana throughout her career, she would stand to receive $18,000 more at retirement.

"We feel that we are being treated unfairly by the school system," she wrote in an e-mail to School Board member Candy Olson.

"I realize you and other Gentile members of the community may say, "But we can't let all teachers have a free day for their religion because they are in the minority,' but this affects us financially. . . . No Christian teacher will lose a cent for celebrating Christmas or Easter."

The decision

Joe Trumbach, the School Board's director of administration, considered many things when pondering whether to recommend a day off during the High Holy Days. The economic argument was compelling, he said. So was the argument that it is difficult for Jewish students to make up work after taking time off.

But the point that won him over was simply this: Other school districts do it.

Trumbach did some research and learned that Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties have crafted school calendars favorable to the High Holy Days.

Pasco, Hernando, Citrus and Pinellas do not take days off for the High Holy Days, but students who don't come to school get an excused absence, as was Hillsborough's policy.

Trumbach heads Hillsborough's calendar committee, a group of about two dozen parents, faculty, school staff and people in the community. Each year, the committee must come up with a schedule that has as many uninterrupted five-day school weeks as possible, starts no earlier than August and ends no later than the end of May, and squeezes 184 days in between -- four days more than most other public school systems statewide.

Trumbach approached Phyllis Rogoff, a mother, PTA president at Orange Grove Magnet Middle School and a Jewish member of the committee. She had expressed interest in the issue before, but nothing had been done.

Now Trumbach wanted to know which holy day she would like to have off if she could have only one. The schedule might allow for one day, but probably not two.

Rogoff chose Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, rather than Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year.

In committee meetings, "I just kept pushing for it," she said. "If they were going to take a day for Good Friday, they should take a day for this."

Having heard the teachers' concerns, her fellow committee members backed her up and presented the School Board a calendar with no classes on Yom Kippur.

School Board member Carolyn Bricklemyer said she was swayed after talking to Jewish students and a group at a synagogue last year.

"We're looking at things differently now," Bricklemyer said. "We're looking at the diversity of our community."

Olson and fellow School Board member Carol Kurdell said they were pleased that the district created the day off. Both talked on the phone with people, but what cinched their vote was knowing the district could spare the day.

"There was an element of felicity involved in that it worked for the calendar," Olson said.

That's no guarantee students and teachers will get Yom Kippur off in coming years. To make the schedule work, that day off may have to fall elsewhere in the future, she said.

Don't say 'religion'

The Hillsborough case shows the complications school systems face when trying to create a workable school calendar while also respecting a diversity of beliefs. That they must do this without mentioning religion only makes things harder.

Palm Beach County schools started closing on Yom Kippur six or seven years ago, after officials saw a high rate of student and teacher absenteeism on that day. But, mindful of church-state separation, the district refers to the day off simply as "fall holiday."

"We do not celebrate specific religious holidays," associate superintendent Cheryl Alligood said. "That's something public school systems have to be very careful about."

Likewise, on the Hillsborough County public schools calendar, Sept. 27, 2001 -- Yom Kippur -- is marked simply "non-student day."

Many school officials say schedulemaking is a practical issue, not a religious one. If school were held around Christmas, classrooms would be nearly empty.

Robert Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said a number of school districts with large Jewish populations shut down for attendance reasons on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana.

The same logic should apply around Christmas and Easter, Boston said: "The fact is, 95 percent of the kids aren't going to be in school that day."

Hillsborough board member Olson said it's unfortunate that some believers have to come to school on important holidays. But she said it's not always easy to be fair.

"As a Roman Catholic, I observe certain days. We have holy days of obligation," she said. "Nobody gives me those days off. I'm not sure that practicing one's faith is always convenient."

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.