This being the Easter season I felt it was time to express my concern and, I will say it, utter disdain toward the move by the public schools in Hollister to no longer connect spring break to Easter.
San Benito High School has officially done it, and my guess is that the Hollister School District, Spring Grove, Southside and many other districts will follow suit. On paper it sounds like a good idea to make spring break the first week in April so people can plan. But unless I failed my U.S. government course in high school, (which I didn’t), one of the most sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution is freedom of religion. So if one is a member of the Christian tradition we will now be forced to take some of our own personal time to celebrate the holiday.
The calendar at San Benito High School in the 29 years I have been there has always been attached to the Easter holiday. If Easter falls at the beginning of spring break we also had Good Friday off. If the Easter holiday fell at the end of the break, we would get the Monday after Easter off to travel.
Beginning next year we will have the first week in April off. Easter is March 27 next year, Good Friday March 25. No holiday is planned for the 25th, meaning I will have to take a personal necessity day to celebrate my religious holiday. In 2017 it’s worse, as Easter will be April 17, with no spring break on either end. We will have to use a personal day for both Good Friday, and the day after Easter if we travel out of town to celebrate with family.
I am sure we will not be alone. Let’s say even 10 percent of the kids are absent one or both days that year, the districts will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars. People may say that celebrating Easter is a violation of their freedom of religion, but by attaching the spring break to the holiday how are they hurt? If they don’t celebrate Easter, then they can do something else as a family; no harm, no foul.
I will also say that I guarantee that no founding father ever pictured Easter being a stumbling block to someone’s religious freedom. Again on paper, no big deal, but with each passing thing that Christians are forced to give up the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of religion seems to not apply to us.
Randy Logue is a San Benito High School teacher.
