Groups challenge school start on High Holy Day

Groups gather outside United Brothers Synagogue in Bristol July 8, 2021 to call on the Bristol Warren School District to reschedule the start of classes, now set for September 7, the Jewish High Holy Day Rosh Hashanah. Photo by Steve Klamkin WPRO News

By Steve Klamkin WPRO News

Jewish groups, teachers and labor organizations and others take issue with a refusal by the Bristol Warren School committee to re-set the first day of school in September, which falls on a Jewish High Holy Day.

Speakers gathered Thursday morning outside a Bristol synagogue to implore the school committee that oversees the Bristol Warren schools to reschedule the first day of classes, now set for September 7, the first day of Rosh Hashanah.

Speakers said the school committee had refused to consider appeals to change the opening day of classes.

“The first day of school should not be on a holiday, said Donna Stauber, a 27-year veteran teacher at the Kickemuit Middle School in Warren, which is part of the district.

“It’s just not fair to students, and as an educator, it’s my job to do what’s right for kids,” she said.

Stauber filed an equal employment opportunity complaint against the school committee, while others talk of legal action.

“We’re not asking anymore, we are demanding the first day of school will not be on Rosh Hashanah, that’s a promise, it won’t happen,” said Rabbi Barry Dolinger, a lawyer in additional to being President of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Rhode Island.

“We’re going to rise up and make that not happen. We’re going to bring lawsuits. Our plagues will look a little different,” than the biblical plagues visited on the Egyptian Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus, Dolinger said.

“You know, we never know when something is anti-semitic,” said Rabbi Dolinger. “We don’t know what’s in people’s hearts and minds. In the same ways that racism is systemic, it doesn’t really matter if people have good intentions or bad intentions. It’s the effect that matters and the disparate impact.”

Another rabbi, Howard Voss-Altman of Temple Habonim of Barrington said at the conclusion of the gathering said he received a text message, urging that he look for some unspecified action at the next meeting of the school committee, July 19.

A call to the Bristol Warren School Committee Chairperson, Marjorie McBride, was not immediately returned.