Gilroy public school choirs won’t be singing in church anymore, after several anonymous members of the public complained that holding concerts in a single faith establishment is not an adequate separation of church and state.
After decades of hosting annual performances at various local churches, the Gilroy Unified School District decided last spring to not hold concerts in churches, starting this year.
“In compliance with state and federal laws regarding separation of church and state, we need to make sure that all students and families in the district can enjoy school performances without having to be required to sit in a church, synagogue, mosque or any other religious venue unless there is no other adequate space for the performances to occur,” wrote GUSD Superintendent Debbie Flores Tuesday in an email to the Dispatch.
The administrative decision isn’t too popular with many of GUSD’s roughly 200 choir members or their parents. They say the district’s nine choral groups deserve to perform in facilities with appropriate acoustics.
The decision was made after Flores took note of several years of complaints that Gilroy’s public school choirs were performing in churches. Flores sought legal counsel from the district’s attorney and was advised that public schools can only perform in churches if the district does not have adequate facilities for performances. An administrative decision was made and the issue did not go to the Board of Education for a vote.
“The bottom line is we’re not going to be holding [choir concerts] in churches,” said Flores, who met with principals around January of last year and sent them a memo regarding the new rule. “The decision has already been made.”
While the decision was made months ago, it comes into affect now.
The fall concert is next week and students will be performing in the Christopher High School Dining Commons and the Gilroy High School Student Center instead of in St. Mary’s Parish, where they have performed for years without charge.
“It’s not really a new rule,” said GUSD Board of Education trustee Mark Good. “My understanding is if there is no other alternative suitable location, you can still use the church.”
Good also points out: the facilities available to choirs have changed over the years. When Good first joined the School Board in the 1990s, there was no cafeteria at GHS and most of the multipurpose rooms in the district did not exist. Many of the district’s new buildings have been constructed over the last 13 years, meaning there are new adequate spaces to hold concerts, he explained.
Parents like Tim Day, whose daughter participated in GUSD choirs for four years before pursuing her love of singing with a musical performance degree at Brigham Young University in Idaho, called the decision “sad.”
“I think that’s kind of self serving and short sighted – somebody objecting to having it inside a church,” he opined.
When his daughter was a GUSD student, Day, who is a Mormon, frequently attended his daughter’s concerts at churches outside his faith, including performances at a Lutheran Church, a Presbyterian Church and the South Valley Community Church, which is “gospel centered and mission focused,” according to its website.
“It wasn’t any secular thing,” he reasoned. “They were just performing where the acoustics were good and people could hear.”
CHS Choir Director Claire Massey doesn’t mind where the students perform, but she does care about sound quality.
“I don’t care whether or not it is in a church. I care about the acoustics. And churches were built for acoustics,” she said. “I just want my kids to feel good about their performance. They can tell when they are in a room where the sound doesn’t carry.”
The reasoning behind GUSD’s decision, Flores elaborated, is the district has adequate facilities for concerts and therefore isn’t supposed to be using churches.
Flores cited numerous “adequate” facilities, including the GHS Student Center designed to seat 1,000 people, the GHS theater, the new Rucker Elementary School multipurpose room and a number of middle school and high school multipurpose rooms and gyms.
But many members of the GUSD choirs – which began to receive recognition at a state level as early as 1990 and built a stellar reputation as a top high school choral program under the direction of former longtime maestro Phil Robb – aren’t satisfied with the district administration’s definition of “adequate.”
Last week, two CHS choir students met with Principal Patricia Jolly to voice their concerns about performing their Tuesday fall concert in the school cafeteria. The fall concert has typically been held at St. Mary’s, a location that can seat at least 300 audience members and has better acoustics, some contend.
“Phil Robb has built such a great program that obviously they can sing anywhere, but [the students] remind me that the acoustics are nice there,” said Jolly, who took over for former CHS Principal John Perales this year and wasn’t aware of the district’s decision until she heard about it from the choir students.
This certainly isn’t the first time a school district has acted based on the need to create a definitive separation between church and state.
“There have been many, many cases surrounding the mix between church and state as it relates to public schools,” said Robert Tyler, General Counsel for Advocates for Faith and Freedom, a Southern California-based organization that provides pro bono legal counsel to those taking religious liberty questions to court.
Tyler is quick to note the “separation of church and state” idea is actually not part of the Constitution. It was drawn from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802.
For Robb, who retired in June after 29 years of directing GUSD choirs, defining an “adequate” location for a choir performance is all about acoustics.
In the past, the choir has performed in the Gilroy High School Theater, the South Valley National Bank, the Gilroy Presbyterian Church, the St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Gilroy, the Gilroy Elks Lodge, the Portuguese Hall in Gilroy, the Eagle Ridge Clubhouse, the Mormon Stake Center in Morgan Hill, St. Catherine’s Parish in Morgan Hill, St. Mary’s Parish in Gilroy and the San Juan Bautista Mission.
After trying a bevy of performance venues, Robb can speak from experience.
“The churches have the better acoustics,” he confirmed.
Robb’s search for places with good acoustics has been long standing and inventive. At the beginning of his career with GUSD, when Robb had much smaller choirs, he used to have GHS students sing in the bathroom.
“Only the women’s bathroom – the men’s smelled,” he added.
He also took students outside to sing under the awning of the Gilroy High School Gymnasium because it gave acoustic feedback.
For parents like Tim Day, the decision to sing where the acoustics are good is an easy one.
“I guess what affects my feelings about this is I think there is a reverse discrimination going on, in that people are too easily offended by things they shouldn’t be offended by,” said Day. “I mean, walking into a church doesn’t mean you are going to be abducted into any cult.”
