This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2014, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Perhaps a new class of people should be considered for anti-discrimination protection, at least in Bountiful.
That would be preschool-age children.
Carrie Harris has complained to the Davis School District that the principal at Boulton Elementary School in Bountiful will not let parents take their tots in the preschool program to the school's lobby to register each day.
Instead, as parents were told at school orientation, they are to wait with their children on the school playground and a staffer will come outside, register the child and bring him or her into the preschool classroom.
It's sort of like being ordered to the back of the bus, she says.
Parents of the preschoolers also were told they may not park in the school lot when dropping off children. They are to park on 200 West between Orchard Drive and 2700 South which, as Harris' husband James Harris, an attorney, points out, is a school bus area and a red "no parking zone."
It's as if school officials are entrapping the parents to get a parking ticket, the parents contend.
In her response to Harris' complaint, Kristi Frodsham, district director of elementary education, said there was some miscommunication.
Parents can bring their children to the back door to meet the registrar during inclement weather, and they can wait with them on the playground during fair weather. If they have to stay longer than the few minutes it takes to drop off and sign in their children, there is a second parking lot, farther away, they can use.
Frodsham said the rules are to avoid congestion. That's why they have the preschoolers register 25 minutes before the kindergarten students arrive.
As for the lobby ban, Frodsham said preschoolers broke two chairs in the lobby last year and the school staff is just trying to protect the property paid for by the taxpayers.
As we all know, 4-year-olds jump on chairs and break them. It's in their nature. But they stop doing it when they're 5.
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Speaking of discrimination: Reagan Outdoor Advertising has refused to sell billboard space to American Atheists wanting to promote its convention in Salt Lake City and to a group proposing a "God Loves Gays" message.
But it has a billboard on I-15 southbound at 3900 South that says: "An equal opportunity employer. Except for —-holes."
So the message, apparently, is that gays and athiests are —-holes and therefore can be discriminated against, but everyone else should be treated equally, except, maybe, other categories of —-holes, as determined by, well, someone.