School calendar brings support, dissension
BY ELAINE VAN DEVELDE
Staff Writer

EDISON — The controversy over the school calendar has sparked a “religion versus education” debate that has engulfed the community.

Since the Board of Education’s meeting on March 3 — during which changes to the calendar were proposed to take at least one day from Jews for observance of the holy Rosh Hashana — people have expressed a variety of opinions on the subject.

School administrators defend their decision to make an “operational” choice.

Rabbi Bernhard Rosenberg of Congregation Beth-El called for a strike of the district’s 160 Jewish staff members, if the district ends up with one or no days off on Rosh Hashana.

“We’re in the business of educating kids,” said Assistant Superintendent Rose Traficante. “A strike accomplishes nothing for kids nor does it speak to any level of professionalism for teachers.”

Traficante also said that 90 percent of the roughly 50 e-mails received by the district’s administrative offices on the subject were in support of the board.

Those in the Chinese and Hindu communities, including board member Zhaobo “Bob” Wong, have lobbied for years to get their holidays, such as Chinese New Year on the calendar, said schools administrator Daniel Michaud.

“Edison is an extremely ethnically, culturally and religiously diverse town,” Michaud said outside of the meeting. “The board is mostly upset and resentful of people who are trying to make it look as if this changing the calendar is some sort of anti-Semitic action. That could not be further from the truth. We are only looking for the students to get the best education they can out of those 180 days.”

Michaud said when making up a calendar, school officials have to consider that most businesses and government offices are closed on certain days that are federal and Christian holidays.

“It just so happens that these holidays characteristically empty the schools and businesses,” he said. “We would not be able to operate if we made a switch like that. And in a public school system, the choice is only operational.”

Board President Robert Barry echoed the sentiment at the March 3 board meeting.

“We don’t track students by religion,” he said. “What their religion is means nothing to us, not because we don’t respect their individual choices, but because we treat them as children.”

Pitting people against one another in the community only hurts the kids, Traficante said.