A closer look -- Cities, schools at odds over holiday decorations

Danette Goulet

For years, Newport Beach and Costa Mesa have decorated public

buildings during the holidays without hearing a peep, city officials

said.

But in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, holiday decorations

have always been controversial and thus taboo on school campuses.

Supt. Robert Barbot said it’s always been a touchy issue everywhere

he’s worked during his 27 years in public education.

This inconsistency in how public buildings are viewed was demonstrated

again last week when school board President Dana Black asked parents to

take down lights they had strung up at Mariners Elementary School in

Newport Beach.

Black said the lights were Christmas-related and inappropriate on a

public building, but parents argued they were festive and in no way

religious.

“We thought it was just festive and fun and in season,” said Ann

Ramser, a Mariners parent.

CITY HALL DISPLAYS

While parents were taking down strings of lights at Mariners,

volunteers throughout Newport Beach were out decorating on public

property.

“All the work spaces and department offices outside City Hall have

Christmas trees,” said David Niederhaus, the city’s director of general

services.

“In City Hall, there are smaller trees up to the discretion of the

department. We just buy one tree in the lobby; that’s been the tradition

for years.”

Outside the Balboa Fire Station, Niederhaus noted, there is always a

huge tree that is bought by the city and decorated each year by

volunteers from the Balboa Island Improvement Assn.

Other public locations where decorations can be found, he said, are

the Balboa Island bridge and various community recreation centers. There

also is a tree on the Balboa Boulevard median and decorated topiaries --

the bushes shaped by wire frames -- in Corona del Mar.

Although Costa Mesa doesn’t go all out the way Newport Beach does,

Carol Proctor of the city manager’s office said there are decorations

throughout City Hall each year.

“We have never had [complaints] as far as I know,” she said. “We have

had people compliment though.”

With all that’s done in Newport Beach, Niederhaus said no one has

objected to the city’s decorations either.

“I’ve been here 14 years, and I know that the people at City Hall are

very eager every year for me to get the tree up,” he said.

“I’ve never seen any type of religious symbol, and we’ve never had a

complaint about it. It’s like complaining about mom and apple pie.”

PROBLEMS AT SCHOOLS

And yet lesser decorations at schools have historically created

problems.

In the past, there have been complaints about decorations at schools

other than Mariners, including Kaiser and Newport Heights elementary

schools, but Mariners typically has the most complaints, school board

members said.

“We have had many complaints over the course of the years related to

holiday decorations, but to be real honest they’ve come out of the

Mariners community the most,” said trustee Martha Fluor. “Partly because

it’s very visible because the school is on a main drag.”

Mariners is at 2100 Mariners Blvd., at the corner of Irvine Avenue.

The Rev. Connie Regener, interfaith director for the Orange County

National Conference for Community Justice, said the problem exists on

campuses not because they are public buildings, as Black suggests, but

because they are schools.

“Schools are different . . . in the public’s eyes because we want our

schools to transmit our values, traditions and beliefs, and we expect a

school to do that in a different way than our city hall,” she said.

And although she understands the inconsistency, Regener suggests that

the school district’s request to remove all decorations may not be the

answer.

“The marginalized have the right to speak out, but there’s a danger if

you let the marginalized set the standard,” she said. “So I would call

for a dialogue.”