As Easter approaches, there’s been a lot of chatter about a Seattle Public Schools teacher who allegedly required a volunteer student in her class to call Easter eggs “spring spheres.”

Interesting story on government neutralizing of religious holidays. But is it true?

Seattle Public Schools spokeswoman Teresa Wippel said Wednesday that the district does have a policy on religious holidays, but that it has not confirmed that the “spring sphere” incident actually happened. And the reporting so far has been a little vague.

“It’s gone viral all over the place, but we haven’t heard if or when it happened,” Wippel said.

The story so far goes like this: MyNorthwest.com posted a story last week about a 16-year-old student named “Jessica,” from an unnamed local private high school, who said she wanted to do a community service project for an unnamed third-grade Seattle Public Schools class.

The story came from the girl’s interview with the hot-air machine that is KIRO radio’s Dori Monson. According to MyNorthwest.com, Jessica said she offered to fill plastic eggs with treats and jelly beans for the third graders, which the teacher said was O.K. if the girl called them “spring spheres.”

“I couldn’t call them Easter eggs,’” Jessica told Monson, according to MyNorthwest (which has audio of the interview).

“(But) when I took them out of the bag, the teacher said, ‘Oh look, spring spheres’ and all the kids were like ‘Wow, Easter eggs.’ So they knew.”



On Wednesday, the Stranger reported that the Seattle school district had been bombarded by people who like to write in all caps when mad. Relying on an anonymous source, it reported that one email said:

“EASTER EGGS, EASTER EGGS, EASTER EGGS…IF IT WEREN’T FOR CHRISTIANS THERE WOULD BE NO SEATTLE, NO VACATION TIME FOR YOUR CRAZY SELVES…”

Wippel confirmed that the School Board had gotten a lot of emails on the issue, and that the district had received “numerous questions” about its religious policy. The questions prompted the district to put out a statement Wednesday, which said:

We have a “Religion and Religious Accommodation” policy, approved by the School Board in 1983, stating that “no religious belief or non-belief should be promoted by the School District or its employees, and none should be disparaged.”

True or not, Spheregate follows a few other well-known non-promotions of holidays. The city of Seattle purposely leaves out the word “Easter” from its annual community-center “spring egg hunts.”

And the Port of Seattle was pummeled over Christmas trees a few years ago, after a threatened lawsuit in 2006. They first removed the trees, then brought back, then said they weren’t Christmas trees, but trees that promote “peace and harmony.”

Visit seattlepi.com’s home page for more Seattle news. Vanessa Ho can be reached at 206-448-8003 or vanessaho@seattlepi.com. Follow Vanessa on Twitter at twitter.com/vanessaho.