By KATHERINE PETERSEN
Parents of students in the Cupertino Union School District have differing beliefs on how religious holidays should or shouldn't be worked into the district's curriculum.
Former superintendent Patricia Lamson formed a committee to look into changing the district's 1975 policy on teaching students about religious holidays.
The wording of the committee's recommended policy focuses on teaching children about different cultures, which could include religious holidays, rather than searching for a means to incorporate religious holidays into the curriculum.
As it stands now, classes only discuss and celebrate holidays a week prior to the occasion.
Board president Sandra James said it is time to revisit the policy, but it will be hard because such a controversial issue tears at people's gut instincts.
"It's time, but religious representation or instruction is a controversial, volatile subject, and there's no way to get around that," she said.
Michelle Gutierrez, who lives in Sunnyvale, does not want to see American heritage neglected in favor of other cultures.
"It's important to learn about where people's parents and grandparents came from and other cultures, but I wouldn't want to see us neglect patriotic songs and original writings from our founding fathers. That's one thing I'd like to see emphasized and not put in a corner," she said.
Both the recommended policy, on which the school board will hold an as-of-yet unscheduled study session, and the old policy are vague. Controversy may arise when board members discuss more specific regulations of any new policy, Lamson said.
The issue was first brought to Lamson's attention by parents, and she said the district wouldn't do anything without community involvement. Yet some parents who spoke at a recent meeting said they felt out of the loop and uninformed about how to become involved.
Sunnyvale resident Mary Ann Kurtz, who has one child in CUSD schools, said she heard about the religious holiday issue through the grapevine and wanted to know how she could keep up with it as it progressed.
"I was very disturbed to hear that this is a process that has been going on for quite some time, and so little was known about it. There does need to be assertive communication because this affects so many cultures and so many religious groups and so many different people within such a diverse community," she said.
This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, April 16, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.