Student suspended for attending concert to graduate

Source: Backstreet.net and Associated Press Texas Wire News

May 27, 2000

SAN ANTONIO (AP) - Jason Trejo, one of four students suspended from a private Christian school earlier this year for attending a Backstreet Boys concert, will graduate today.

Trejo transferred to a public school after the suspension from Sunnybrook Christian Academy, but was short the credits he needed to graduate this year.

Trejo took some night classes and passed the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills test to catch up with his classmates.

Trejo and three other Sunnybrook students were suspended in March because they broke a school rule barring ``involvement with inappropriate music,'' school administrator Trudie Perez has said.

The Backstreet Boys, a band that's wildly popular with teen-age girls, played to a packed Alamodome crowd. Once school officials confirmed some students had attended, they gave them one-day suspensions.

Trejo's mother complained about the music policy and refused to sign a statement saying she agrees with it and other school rules. She later withdrew him from the school.

The Christian school forbids ``involvement'' with music groups such as the Backstreet Boys because of some song lyrics, Perez said.

``They have some good music, but some of the music, I have been told, has certain sexual references,'' Perez said. She cited the band's song lyrics, ``Are you sexual?'' and ``I want to touch your body all night.''

``That's not the message that we want to convey to our young people,'' Perez has said. ``We send the message of sexual abstinence.''

The school has 315 students in kindergarten through 12th grade.