By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Dowagiac Board of Education will not be moving forward with a policy preserving Sundays for family time over school activities.
Continuing a discussion which began Sept. 15, the school board Oct. 6 devoted two hours at its first work session to debating the merits of having Sunday free of sports practices and other school events to be more family-friendly.
Monday night at Patrick Hamilton Middle School board member Sherry File offered a potential policy for first reading, only to withdraw it when additional discussion signaled consensus was no closer on the complex issue.
Board member Bill Lawrence likened "trying to construct a board policy across the board that prohibits any activity on Sunday" to "taking a shotgun to a rifle-sized problem."
Lawrence said the current policy contained in the athletic code of not punishing any student-athlete who cannot participate on Sundays "goes as far as I'm comfortable going after looking at all of the issues and at all of the activities that occur on Saturdays and Sunday and all the different religious practices that people have and family activity time that people have. The present policy goes about as far as we can to accommodate everybody's point of view.
File's policy draft stated: "The Board of Education believes that practices will enhance the student's ability to perform. The Board of Education also recognizes that family is paramount in the development of character of each student, so that a day will be set aside for family plans: extra-curricular practices and competitions will not be held on Sunday in the Dowagiac Union Schools District.
Lawrence said short of a ban, "Then we get into trying to select out what programs we're going to prohibit from Sundays. What's 'regular?' What's a practice?' We get into trying to split all these hairs to accommodate a policy I think is hard to make work.