Dog Bites

Schooled in Prayer
Clamoring to save young black students from educational alienation, the San Francisco School Board might have tripped over the thin line separating church and state. Witness the new African-American immersion program adopted by the board in February. As the Examiner reported in a recent two-part series, the I Rise Project, a pilot class at Cesar Chavez School taught by Jomo Mfuasi, exposes children to Afrocentric values through Zulu chants, ancestor ceremonies, meditation, and occasional student-led prayers by Muslim classmates.

The prayers raise Marty Kassman's eyebrow. "Any time a teacher tries to inculcate religious values into schoolchildren, we have a problem," says Kassman, president of the Bay Area chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "The teacher clearly has no right to lead the children in Muslim rituals."

Pilar Mejia, principal at Cesar Chavez School, says Muslim-influenced teachings are not intrinsic to the immersion program adopted by the school board, but a product of the "dynamics of the class and individual teachers." She's also made it clear to Mfuasi that the school cannot promote religion in the classroom.

Beyond school prayer, Mejia says the issue of Muslim values -- often criticized for homophobic, anti-feminist, and anti-Semitic principles -- has also been addressed. Mejia says questions came up in the hiring process, chiefly because an openly gay teacher had recently died of AIDS. "I told [Mfuasi] that we really wanted to hire him, but that [acceptance] is important to us because we have gay teachers and parents," says Mejia, who claims Mfuasi insisted there was not a problem.

Mejia says, "I think it's a legitimate issue, but we don't let things divide us. We are very open and honest and deal with issues in a very open and serious way. It's not easy, but we have to practice this for the children."

Down by Law: The Sequel
Don Hyde, who faces life in prison under a federal indictment for conspiring to distribute LSD (as SF Weekly reported in "Down by Law," Jan. 31), has reason for guarded optimism. The Healdsburg movie exhibitor reports that a federal judge in Covington, Ky., has granted his case a change of venue -- to San Francisco. Hyde says his attorneys believe that's the first time a federal court has made such a move in nearly a decade.

Last week Hyde and his lawyers traveled to Covington to witness a deposition from the ex-wife of the DEA informant who fingered Hyde. "She's basically testifying for the government," Hyde says. "She was picked up after she made a positive statement for us. I was stunned. ... By any other name, that's extortion and kidnapping."

Hyde also says that his defense fund netted about $35,000 (of a reported $115,000 gross) from friend Tom Waits' February benefit at Oakland's Paramount Theater. The show, Hyde says, "set up a real positive vortex -- for the people on the legal end of it, my family, myself." Money to defray his legal fees might well be "secondary" to the emotional support of well-wishers, but Hyde won't deny he's pleased that checks continue to trickle in.

Fire Department to the Rescue
Discussions about merging the paramedic division of the S.F. Health Department into the Fire Department have missed an essential point: In cutting loose their 250-plus paramedics, health officials are doing them a huge favor. Under the Fire Department, the paramedic budget will become a sacred cow -- just like the rest of the Fire Department -- ceasing to be connected to public health, the city's budget pariah. And response time to accidents and medical emergencies will likely decrease, since the Fire Department is spread all over the city.

By Jeff Stark, James Sullivan, George Cothran