Posted on 01/31/2002 8:02:37 AM PST by tdadams
As Nashville's school board contends with sluggish test scores, dilapidated buildings and an institutionally disgruntled teachers' union, its educational colleagues in Williamson County have been struggling with a more frivolous, if nevertheless controversial, issue.
School board members there voted last week to return the names of winter and spring breaks, as they have been known for several years, to Christmas and Easter breaks. Leslie Pippin, the longtime board member who introduced the motion to attach Christian designations to student vacation time, says that all she asks is for others to respect her faith, which is apparently under siege in Middle Tennessee's suburban trenches.
"Quite simply this nation was founded upon Christian principles," Pippin says, adding that she had a Jewish grandfather who recognized Christmas. "Christians were always called upon to be tolerant of others. Now I'm just asking for that same consideration."
Under pressure from then-school superintendent Terry Grier, the Williamson County school board chose several years ago to remove the Christian names and give the two vacations seasonal monikers. Now, with the unpopular Grier having shuttled off to North Carolina and a popular Republican occupying the White House, the board voted 7-5 to bring back the Christian labels. The motion, which goes into effect next school year, comes on the heels of a failed effort to post a copy of the Ten Commandments in municipal buildings.
"Our former superintendent was trying to be politically correct, and so was the board at that time," Pippin says. "But it was Christmas break long before it was winter break."
Rabbi Ken Kanter of Brentwood's Congregation Micah says that he's talked with about six parents of Williamson County students since the board's vote. "I don't know if they were tearing their hair out, but they saw this as a sign that the board was not as welcoming to non-Christian kids," he says.
Kanter says that using the seasons to label the holidays makes the most sense. "Why not use the terminology that is the most inclusive?"
Predictably, the president of the Nashville Chapter of the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State doesn't agree with the board's vote either. "I certainly think this is a step backward," Charles Sumner says. "I think it's the mentality of some of the populace that they need to promote Christianity."
But board member Charlene Kimmel counters that calling the two holidays "Christmas" and "Easter" breaks recognizes the obvious. "I'm pretty much someone who calls a spade a spade," she says. "We call Jan. 21 Martin Luther King Day. We don't call it Human Rights Day."
Kimmel says that in her native Long Island, N.Y., schools give their students the day off for the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana. "We didn't call it something else," she says.
Surprisingly, Kimmel says that she hasn't heard any criticism about the board's religiously motivated vote. "Quite frankly, most people are getting sick of political correctness."
Fat chance. The ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, atheist God-hating judges and others will make sure that tolerance for Christianity does NOT take place.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high [places]. Eph. 6:12
But we know who wins in the end. Every knee shall bow.
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