SCHOOL BOARD PUT JUDGMENT ON VACATION.

Byline: Joseph Staub Local View

THERE is something slightly unsettling about the debate surrounding Glendale's proposal to extend its school district's winter break to cover Armenian Christmas, which is celebrated on Jan. 6.

What's unsettling is the question: Is this proposal about respecting cultural differences, or about money? It's estimated that the Glendale Unified School District loses a quarter-million dollars in state daily attendance funds every year when Armenian students take off school to celebrate Christmas.

Listen to what Glendale school board President Pam Ellis said when it was suggested that Armenian Genocide Day, April 24, should also be considered for holiday status: ``I don't think we can do the same thing with the genocide as the Armenian Christmas. The cutoff for attendance funds happens before April 24 and that kind of takes the urgency off of that day.''

Takes the urgency off the day?

So is Ms. Ellis suggesting that the full remembrance of the terrible suffering Armenians suffered at the hands of the Turks is somehow less urgent because the school district is not in danger of losing any money?

She goes on to say, ``Eventually we will get there, but I don't think we are ready for that yet.'' Who is this ``we?'' The school board? The parents? The students? Who, exactly? And, if the day is as important as she implies, how ready does Glendale have to be? Either the day is worthy of being a holiday, or it isn't. Unless there's another reason, perhaps financial.

It's this kind of hesitant morality that calls into question several of the noble-sounding pronouncements coming from various Glendale officials recently regarding extending the winter break. For instance, there's school board Vice President Greg Krikorian, who said, ``This is an exciting time for the school board, as we would be the first school district in the country to identify Armenian Christmas as a holiday. For the school board to recognize the holiday and be sensitive to its student and employee base would be a wise decision.''

Seems logical, doesn't it?

However, it also seems the school board didn't make the effort to gauge the feeling of the majority of its ``student and employee base'' in making this decision. Why else would Ellis be calling for community meetings to gauge reaction to consideration of the proposal? Shouldn't they have done their homework before acting?

Sandra Fink, president of the Glendale Teachers Association, had this to say: ``We have a large Armenian population, and, to be respectful of the tradition and the holiday, we had to look at switching the calendar around. It's become a concern - if the students aren't coming to school because they're celebrating a holiday, we have to respect that holiday.''

This is the fuzziest of thinking. What Fink has done is attempt to quantify a cultural imperative, i.e., having to respect a holiday because a large number of students do. Well, how many students does it take to have a holiday?

The Glendale Unified School District is around 35 percent Armenian. It is also 25 percent Latino, yet I don't see any holidays celebrating Latino culture; not one holiday celebrating a culture that has an even longer tradition here than most of the other ethnicities in the district. Can we gather from this that the percentage of students you need in order to get your holidays approved is somewhere between 25 and 35?

What if the 4 percent of Filipino student stayed home on June 12? What if the 1.5 percent of African-American students started taking off June 19? (If you don't know why those two dates could be holidays, it's time to brush up on the history of other ethnic minorities.) And let's not forget the 11 percent of Glendale's students who are Asian. They might want the Lunar New Year off.

Using Fink's criteria, those groups are just plain out of luck.

There's clearly no answer that will please everyone. But then, school boards aren't in the business of pleasing everyone, especially where so much money is involved.

But they are in the business of setting a good example for students and staff alike. Rushing into a very important decision, as well-meaning as that decision may seem, serves no one well. Glendale must remember that there are no prizes awarded for school districts that are the first to change their schedules for this or that cultural necessity. There are, though, enormous benefits to being a school district that does not allow political and financial concerns to affect its ability to think clearly and act rationally.