Until it was stolen in August, this picture of Jesus has been hanging in a hallway at Bridgeport High School for about 40 years.
CLARKSBURG - For years, Harold Sklar had been telling the Harrison County school board that it had no defensible position for having a portrait of Jesus hanging in the halls of Bridgeport High School.
When Sklar, an attorney, filed a lawsuit in June to have it removed, school board attorney Richard Yurko told the board the same thing.
On Friday, the board finally showed it was listening.
That's when Harrison County school board members voted 4-1 to approve a settlement that provides it will never hang or display any item with religious content in the school.
"It's the right thing to do," said Richard Katskee, the legal director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "It puts the focus back on the children and not on the religious divisions, and so the plaintiffs are very pleased.
"It's what the school board should have done all along."
Americans United and the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia filed the lawsuits on behalf of plaintiffs Sklar and Jacqueline McKenzie in federal court for the Northern District of West Virginia.
The portrait, Warner Sallman's "Head of Christ," hung at Bridgeport for approximately 40 years. It was stolen in August and hasn't been recovered.
Katskee said he has wrestled with the thought that the theft helped bring about a more timely end to the issue.
"I've struggled to try to figure that out," he said. "I've never been able to come up, with ideal confidence, an answer to that question.
"We don't know who stole it. We don't know why it was stolen. The school board's response was initially, 'We want to do this, we're going to do this and find a way to put it back up.'
"Nothing about the portrait being stolen solved anything, but I think it may have happened to help everyone move forward with the legal proceedings. The board took a hard look at what it was fighting for and came to the right conclusion."
Sklar, who is Jewish, tried repeatedly to reason with the school board and have the portrait taken down. When he filed the lawsuit, the board raised $150,000 to help with legal fees even though Yurko advised it that it was a near-unwinnable lawsuit.
Reportedly, the board spent almost $19,000 and will return the remainder to those who donated it.
The issue appeared to be reaching a conclusion before its scheduled February trial when the board voted that even if the portrait was recovered, it would not be re-hung.
Surveillance tapes show a white male weighing between 220-250 pounds stealing the picture on Aug. 17.
But students gave incoming principal Mark DeFazio a mirror with the inscription "... to know the will of God is the highest of all wisdoms, the love of Jesus Christ lives within all of us," to replace the portrait.
On the advice of its legal team, the board had the mirror taken down. It hung for only three-and-a-half hours Sept. 1.
The mirror was a gift from the Christian Freedom Alliance, a student group that helped raise $6,700 to fight the lawsuit.
The Alliance Defense Fund provided the board with free defense before the school board decided to cut its losses.
"I think the school board had to become educated in the law to really understand what the problems are," Katskee said. "Mind you, the plaintiffs have been telling them this for years.
"They needed to see for themselves and be in litigation to understand."
Katskee said a trial would have been a waste of time, though he was sure it was coming to that.
"This sort of case shouldn't ever get near a trial, the law is so clear," he said. "With the messages we were getting out of the board, I thought it was highly likely we would go to trial.
"We're all set to do that. It wasn't a pleasant surprise things turned out like this because it would have been a waste of the courts to deal with issues that are already clear."
Judge Irene Keeley must approve the settlement.
