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School Board avoids subject of prayer
By BARBARA BEHRENDT © St. Petersburg Times, published March 14, 2001 INVERNESS -- After months of debate, the School Board on Tuesday decided to deal with the issue of opening their meetings with a prayer by simply not dealing with it. No changes were made in the board's practice of allowing its members to lead the opening prayer however they choose. Although board member Carol Snyder had requested that the issue be placed on Tuesday's agenda for discussion and a decision, Chairwoman Patience Nave declined to do so. Board member Sandra "Sam" Himmel opened the meeting with a prayer addressed to "gracious and loving God," and then the board adopted the agenda. Snyder sought to add the prayer issue, saying the issue of when clubs could meet in schools had been settled through administrative guidelines but the prayer issue had not. But no other board member would second Snyder's motion. Later in the meeting, Snyder made a motion that the board open meetings with a moment of silent reflection. Although there was applause from the audience, the motion also died for the lack of a second. Snyder toldthe board members to remember that, if they face legal action over the issue, their choice to not approve her motion would be a contributing factor. Board member Pat Deutschman took issue with the continuing debate. "We have been assaulted by articles in the paper, by the threats of lawsuits . . . the recurring remarks we all five of us have misled students," she said. Deutschman placed the blame for confusion about the issues squarely on Snyder. The prayer issue has been hotly debated by the board and the community since Snyder asked the board in November to consider changing its policy of making nearly all the meetings' opening prayers overtly Christian. Deutschman said that students spoke to the correct issues at last month's board workshop at Forest Ridge Elementary School and that the board had no right to censor what was said there. At that meeting, nearly two dozen students, many in tears, pleaded with the board not to do away with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, even though no attempt to do so had ever been raised by the board. No formal action on the prayer issue could be taken at that time because the session was a workshop and not a regular meeting. Charles Schrader, the pagan who has interrupted the board meetings by chanting a Wiccan prayer during the formal board prayer, compared Nave's actions to those of Adolf Hitler. He described how Hitler declared his nation Christian and trampled on citizens' rights of free speech and freedom of religion. "The little man from Bavaria eventually went into a hole he had dug in his capital and blew his brains out. The woman from Citrus is presently digging her hole," Schrader said. Beverly Hills resident Jane Fricano told the board she expected a vote at Tuesday's meeting. "I think that it's a cowardly act (to not vote) after you had all those people stand up for what they believed," at the Feb. 27 workshop, she said. Fricano also read a letter from Bert Miller telling the board that he was ashamed of the way the board allowed children at the workshop to speak out emotionally to try to save the FCA. "You misinformed them. You used them. This I find unconscionable. You owe them an apology," Fricano read from Miller's letter. In a letter to Nave, Jim Bitter, chairman of the Citrus County Council, expressed "grave misgivings" about the board's direction. "There are proper models to follow which have been successfully implemented and court tested. Follow those models, end this unproductive debate and move on to the true mission of this board, the education of our children so that they may successfully enter the mainstream of American life in all its diversity," Bitter read from his letter. He warned the board that they had "embarked on a slippery slope" and could face "the rancorous and divisive discourse looming on our horizon." Don Bates told the board that he felt that the students speaking at the previous workshop did understand the issues, and he argued that there was none of the hysteria or misuse of children which had been reported about the event. Bitter said he felt he must have been at a different meeting than Bates because he witnessed hysteria and even saw one child collapse during the event.
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