Schools Scrap Religious Holidays

TBO reported After weeks of delay and debate, the Hillsborough County School Board approved a 2006-07 calendar minus holidays for Yom Kippur, Good Friday or the Muslim holiday Eid Al-Fitr. The 6-1 vote represents a major shift from scheduling days off on religious holidays, a practice School Board Attorney Tom Gonzalez on Tuesday said was wrong. "A school board cannot recognize a religious holiday for the sole purpose of recognizing a religious holiday," Gonzalez said at a meeting packed with dozens of members of the Muslim community, some pleading to have no school on holidays for all religions.

Did these nut cases want school out for the entire month of Ramadan?

So many people celebrate Christmas that businesses can't operate on that day, Gonzalez said.

Does that mean you will let the students off on Christmas, and if so will you call it Christmas?

If large numbers of students and teachers are absent on other religious holidays, the district may opt to again make those days off, he said. Only board member Jennifer Faliero voted against the new calendar, saying she checked with other lawyers and believes Good Friday is a secular holiday: "It is now about the Easter Bunny. ... They have taken religion out of it completely."

I don't know who "they" represents. The ACLU has certainly tried to secularize all Christian holidays and other observances, but what do you think is "good" about Good Friday? Is that when the Easter Bunny comes or did the pagan goddess Ester do something good on Friday?

Ahmed Bedier, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was among those not pleased with the vote. His plea in December for a day off in observance of Eid Al-Fitr, a holy day marking the end of Ramadan, led the board to reconsider its 2006-07 calendar. When the board leaned instead toward giving students three secular holidays in exchange for eliminating Christian and Jewish holidays as days off, Beadier said he feared a backlash. In a news conference Tuesday, Bedier called the change "just an excuse to hide bias against the Muslims."

How many Jews are in Tampa? How many Muslims? There are 18 synagogues around Tampa Bay, and I only found one mosque.

Bishop Chuck Leigh, president of the Florida Council of Churches, backed him, saying, "I think it's really petty on the part of the school board. ... Instead of giving them one holiday, they decided they're not going to give anybody anything."

Actually I would be in favor of giving Muslims one holiday, if Christians were allowed to truly celebrate the true basis for Christmas and Easter.

The policy of excusing students with no penalty on their religious holidays will continue, board members stressed.

OTB blogged Write me when they cancel Christmas. Until then, our society will continue to recognize, rightly, the overwhelming predominance of Christianisty as a cultural backdrop.