The school year ended last June on a bad note for a Ramapo School District student named Alex Caruso. But over the summer things improved markedly when the Hilburn, New York school acted responsibly.
Caruso was faced with a scheduling conflict between a band concert he was expected to be in and a trip to an amusement park that his parish had planned for Altar Servers. At first, Caruso was going to be penalized for not attending the band concert. What made this so odious is that other students who said they could not make the concert for other reasons were not threatened with punishment. The Catholic League stepped in and sent a letter to the school’s principal, Roseanne Needleman.
The league maintained that it was patently unfair to penalize the student because of a scheduling conflict with his parish. We said that although it was not our desire to make a public issue of the case, we would do whatever it took to secure justice. Shortly thereafter the parents of the student received a call from the school promising that there would be no penalties and that the problem would not present itself again in the future.
