A student, Christopher Lee, had drowned. Speaking over the public address system, the principal asked the school to observe a moment of silence in Christopher's memory. In Mildred Rosario's sixth-grade class, the moment of silence led to questions. Rosario's response was to ask those students who did not wish to discuss God to move to the back of the room, near the computer.
Reports suggest that two boys did so.
Most of the students must have agreed because Rosario walked up and down the aisles placing her hands of each child's head and praying with them in Spanish. When word of Rosario's altar call got around, there was a fuss. The Board of Education was in an uproar. There was a disciplinary hearing but only one. Rosario's story ignited the fax lines in Washington, D.C., where conservative politicians smelled an outrage.