The Cape Girardeau school board decided Monday to protect federal holidays from being used as inclement weather makeup days beginning with the 2000-2001 school year.

Board member David Goncher was the only member not to endorse the calendar submitted by the Community Teachers Association calendar committee. Board members earlier had adopted next year's school calendar, which does not omit federal holidays from use as makeup days.

The board has been approached numerous times in recent years by patrons requesting protection for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which is used as an alternative makeup day with Presidents Day. This year, a committee of parents and students was formed to formally petition the board for protection of the holiday, and several students addressed the school board during the meeting.

"I feel we should no longer continue school on Dr. King's Day or Presidents Day," said student Roshundria Gibson during the meeting. "Whoever walked behind someone to freedom? If we can't go hand in hand, I choose not to go."

Committee members indicated other nonfederal holidays within the school calendar could be used as makeup days. The holiday also is important to all Americans and should not be discounted because King was black, they said.

"By using Dr. King's holiday as a snow makeup day, this board has sent a very clear message to the minority citizens of Cape Girardeau in particular, and the entire citizenry of Cape Girardeau as a whole, that Dr. King was a second-class representative of a second-class people, and is only deserving of a second-class and expendable holiday," said the Rev. David Allen during the meeting.

Goncher said he based his dissent on the committee's note that it does not support using federal holidays as inclement weather makeup days.

The school board's job is to protect the financial well-being of the district and do what's in the best interests of all students, not to try to pacify individual groups, he said.

"I propose that we not sanctify any particular holiday," he said. "We should leave all holidays open and available in case those days are needed it as a makeup day."

Cape Girardeau Board of Education

Monday, May 24, 1999

Central Junior High Cafeteria

Action Items:

-- Eliminated second preparation period for tenured teachers

-- Rejected a motion to grant blanket grandfathering for all eligible students for the 1999-2000 school year.

-- Approved fund transfer to special fund.

-- Approved financial services bid by Commerce Bank

-- Set board meeting for June 28

-- Designated Mark Bowles as the Title IX, Section 504 and ADA coordinator for the 1999-2000 school year

-- Approved occupational therapy bid from David Shaffar

-- Approved calendar for the 2000-2001 school year

-- Approved assurance regarding implementation of IDEA

-- Approved gifted guidelines as addendum to gifted curriculum

-- Approved 1999-2000 professional development plan

-- Approved textbook adoptions

-- Approved telephone system bids for Clippard and Alma Schrader schools