''The initiative requires public elementary and secondary schools to provide "opportunities to its pupils for listening to or performing Christmas music at any appropriate time of year" and allows Christmas music to be incorporated into art and social studies curricula and for cultural enrichment during school assemblies.''
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California substitute teacher is petitioning for a ballot initiative that would ensure public-school students are allowed to hear or perform Christmas music during the holiday season.
The state attorney general's office has given Merry Susan Hyatt and her brother David Joseph Hyatt permission to begin collecting signatures for their "Freedom to Present Christmas Music in Public School Classrooms or Assemblies" initiative.
Merry Hyatt, a substitute teacher from Redding, said she was troubled during a Christmas celebration at a school where she worked. She told the New America Foundation, "We were having Christmas without Jesus."
"This is to make sure that we are allowed to have Christmas carols, and no school board member or principal is going to tell us, 'No, you may not play 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' in your classroom," she told KTXL-TV News.
The Hyatts must collect 433,971 signatures from registered voters by March 29, 2010, to get the measure on California's ballot next June or November. http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=114934