Schools Targeted Jewish Family, Suit Says

It’s tough being the only Jewish kids in Pike County’s public schools.

Teachers have forced the Herring children to bow their heads during Christian prayers and talked openly of converting them. Fellow students have drawn swastikas on their lockers and beaten them up, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“One of the times the ministers came in and said I was going to hell because I was not a Christian. I felt scared to admit I was Jewish to anyone,” said 11-year-old Sarah Herring, one of three Herring children in the county schools.

The lawsuit, filed last month, could shake things up in Pike County schools, where assemblies include Christian prayers and scripture readings, the Gideons hand out New Testament Bibles to fifth-graders in class, and preachers are invited to address the students on topics including morals and how to make decisions.

The suit contends that school-sanctioned Christianity has meant continual harassment for the Herring family’s three oldest children: Sarah, Paul, 14, and David, 13. They are the only Jewish children in this southeast Alabama system of 2,600 students.

But Supt. John Key denies that there is an organized effort to harass the Herrings, and says minor incidents have been “embellished beyond belief” by the children’s stepfather, Wayne Willis, and his wife, Sue Willis.

Her three children and his 5-year-old daughter, Rachel, moved to Alabama in 1991.

“The depiction of us being a bunch of neo-Nazi skinheads is just not accurate,” Key said.

Key does confirm many of the allegations in the lawsuit, but says they are not part of an anti-Jewish pattern.

For example, he apologized after a high school assistant principal ordered Paul to write an essay on “Why Jesus Loves Me,” and says a teacher only ordered Paul to remove a Star of David lapel pin because she thought it was a gang symbol.

Key says the lawsuit was orchestrated by the ACLU, which is already enmeshed in two other legal battles to exorcise religion from public life in Alabama.

ACLU lawyers won a court battle to strike down Alabama’s 1993 school prayer law as unconstitutional and are now fighting Gov. Fob James to remove a plaque of the 10 Commandments from a Etowah County courtroom.

Fellow students are familiar with the Herring children’s case.

Tenth-grader Todd Williams said he has seen people draw Nazi symbols on the Herrings’ book bags, and eighth-grader Susan Campbell said classmates “mess with them all the time.”

Key said the school has already made changes because of the ACLU school prayer lawsuit. Organized prayers at assemblies and athletic events will be eliminated or replaced by a moment of silence, and all employees have been told to keep watch for religious harassment.

But Willis said the county hasn’t gone far enough.

“They ask us, ‘What do you want us to do?’ ” she said. “I always say, ‘It’s against federal law. What part of that do you not understand?’ ”