Prayer in School changes coming to SOMSD?

The new policy is below, the old policy is struck-through in the document above.

The Board of Education recognizes that religious belief and disbelief are matters of
personal conviction rather than governmental authority and the students of this district are
protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and by Article I,
Paragraph 4 of the New Jersey State Constitution from the establishment of religion in
the schools. The First Amendment requires public school officials to show neither
favoritism toward nor hostility against religious expression such as prayer.
The United States Department of Education’s Guidance on Constitutionally Protected
Prayer and Religious Expression in Public Elementary and Secondary Schools (USDOE
Guidance) provides information on the current state of the law concerning religious
expression in public schools.

The following activities as outlined in the USDOE Guidance will be permitted upon
applying the governing constitutional principles in particular contexts related to: prayer
during non-instructional time; organized prayer groups and activities; teachers,
administrators, and other school employees’ activities; moments of silence;
accommodations for prayer during instructional time; prayer in classroom assignments;
student assemblies and noncurricular events; prayer at graduation; and/or baccalaureate
ceremonies.

The following activities as outlined in the USDOE Guidance will be permitted upon
applying the governing constitutional principles in particular contexts related to religious
expression: religious literature; teaching about religion; student dress codes and policies;
and/or religious excusals.

The Equal Access Act, 20 U.S.C. Section 4071, is designed to ensure that student
religious activities are afforded the same access to Federally funded public secondary
school facilities as are student secular activities. The United States Department of Justice
has developed guidance for interpreting the Equal Access Act’s requirements outlined in
the USDOE Guidance in the area of general provisions, prayer service and worship
exercises, means of publicized meetings, lunch-time and recess, and leadership of
religious student groups.

Any issues regarding religion in the schools and the provisions of this Policy shall be
referred to the Superintendent of Schools who may consult with the Board Attorney.

There is a very long and enlightening thread on Maplewood Moms on this subject that is worth reading in preparation for the board of education meeting this evening. Approval of the revision of the school policy regarding religion in the schools is on the agenda for that meeting.  There is a push to get those of us who are troubled by the proposed revision to immediately write emails in opposition to the school board members and register via WebEx to speak in opposition during public comment at this evening's meeting.  Several proposed emails may be found in the thread and in emails posters are sending to each other off thread.

My personal take on this is that the wording of the policy can be interpreted to permit group prayer as part of classroom instruction and assembly programming.  Given the diverse cultural and religious backgrounds of our students, I find the revised wording to be most troubling.

joan_crystal said:

There is a very long and enlightening thread on Maplewood Moms on this subject that is worth reading in preparation for the board of education meeting this evening.

Link?

This is a private group.  Only group members could read the posts.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/maplewoodmoms/posts/2187949531413502/?comment_id=2188032841405171&reply_comment_id=2188388814702907¬if_id=1685028851262292¬if_t=group_comment_mention

ok, I just tried to join.

It seems that the problem is that, rather than review our existing policy for (probably relatively minor) changes to make it compliant with recent court rulings, they instead are proposing a mostly (totally?) boilerplate policy that some law firm has written up to be used generically by school districts nation-wide. Perhaps this is an oversimplification of what I read on Facebook, but that was what I got out of it.  It is NOT necessary to make this kind of sweeping change in order to comply with those rulings and our BOE needs to figure out how to do the work needed to keep as much as possible of our existing policies which have been carefully discussed and written over the years to reflect OUR community norms as much as possible. Using the "boilerplate" approach is lazy and also will have a negative effect on our community, given our diversity of religious (and other) views and backgrounds.

I just read The Equal Access Act, 20 U.S.C. Section 4071, and it seems entirely fair and not unlike when I was a student at CHS.  No forcing student or employee participation. No events or gatherings during instructional time (so it has to be an after-school club). Only incidental costs are covered (emptying trash cans and cleaning floors, which is already part of custodial services).  What am I missing?  

The issue is with the proposed revised school board policy which can be easily interpreted as going much farther than what the act proposes.  As a result of input from the community (emails and such) action on the proposal was tabled to allow for additional time to study and hopefully modify the proposed policy prior to final adoption.  The analysis I read stated that the boiler plate issue extends far beyond the religion in the schools issue.  Many more policy changes are impacted by the present board policy of relying on these boiler plate policy revisions.

dave said:

I just read The Equal Access Act, 20 U.S.C. Section 4071, and it seems entirely fair and not unlike when I was a student at CHS.  No forcing student or employee participation. No events or gatherings during instructional time (so it has to be an after-school club). Only incidental costs are covered (emptying trash cans and cleaning floors, which is already part of custodial services).  What am I missing?  

what you are missing is that it throws out the nuanced and painfully developed curricular guidelines developed on things like the use of religious music (eg the results of the Christmas concert debate).  Not because it is part of the Supreme Court ruling, but because it isn’t in the boilerplate that they are using.

susan1014 said:

dave said:

I just read The Equal Access Act, 20 U.S.C. Section 4071, and it seems entirely fair and not unlike when I was a student at CHS.  No forcing student or employee participation. No events or gatherings during instructional time (so it has to be an after-school club). Only incidental costs are covered (emptying trash cans and cleaning floors, which is already part of custodial services).  What am I missing?  

what you are missing is that it throws out the nuanced and painfully developed curricular guidelines developed on things like the use of religious music (eg the results of the Christmas concert debate).  Not because it is part of the Supreme Court ruling, but because it isn’t in the boilerplate that they are using.

Are you saying the concert was practiced during the day and arrangements were officially done so people were against it? Wouldn't that be against the existing aforementioned law already?  Or were the previous guidelines more lenient or, in your words, nuanced? I should probably use the search enginee.... don't want a whole tangent happening because I'm clueless.

joan_crystal said:

The issue is with the proposed revised school board policy which can be easily interpreted as going much farther than what the act proposes.  As a result of input from the community (emails and such) action on the proposal was tabled to allow for additional time to study and hopefully modify the proposed policy prior to final adoption.  The analysis I read stated that the boiler plate issue extends far beyond the religion in the schools issue.  Many more policy changes are impacted by the present board policy of relying on these boiler plate policy revisions.

It sounds like the boilerplate is poorly crafted.  I wonder how many school systems are going with it.

dave said:

It sounds like the boilerplate is poorly crafted.  I wonder how many school systems are going with it.

The boiler plate was crafter by a firm with national reach.  It is probably perfectly acceptable in places like Texas and Florida where fundamental Christian influence favors religion in the schools despite a Constitution that clear advocates for separation of Church and State.  It does not reflect values in States such as NJ which favor a more moderate application of the Supreme Court decision.

dave said:

susan1014 said:

dave said:

I just read The Equal Access Act, 20 U.S.C. Section 4071, and it seems entirely fair and not unlike when I was a student at CHS.  No forcing student or employee participation. No events or gatherings during instructional time (so it has to be an after-school club). Only incidental costs are covered (emptying trash cans and cleaning floors, which is already part of custodial services).  What am I missing?  

what you are missing is that it throws out the nuanced and painfully developed curricular guidelines developed on things like the use of religious music (eg the results of the Christmas concert debate).  Not because it is part of the Supreme Court ruling, but because it isn’t in the boilerplate that they are using.

Are you saying the concert was practiced during the day and arrangements were officially done so people were against it? Wouldn't that be against the existing aforementioned law already?  Or were the previous guidelines more lenient or, in your words, nuanced? I should probably use the search enginee.... don't want a whole tangent happening because I'm clueless.

I can't do a good job by it, and may get details wrong, but years ago we had a huge debate about the presence of music celebrating religious holidays in our schools and school concerts.  At the elementary level, the issue was "winter concerts" that used music celebrating one of the main Christian holidays (Christmas), and adding one song from one of the most minor Jewish holidays (Hanukkah), as if that was a balanced and equal approach to religious diversity.  In the end, most elementary "Winter Concert" moved into January, and simply dropped the holiday themes.

At the end of the debate, I believe we ended up with a policy that said that the study of religiously themed art and music can be extremely important academically, but should not be done in ways that seem to use curricular time or school concerts to celebrate religious holidays -- in other words, if the HS music teacher wants to teach Handel's Messiah because it is a great piece of choral music, it shouldn't be done in December and presented as part of a "Holiday" concert.  (note that I'm not looking at the redlined policy as I write this summary)

It was an answer that made it possible to teach religiously-linked music to kids of other faith traditions for curricular reasons, without asking them to participate in the celebration of a Christian religious holiday. Didn't make everyone happy, but I think it was, and is, a good policy for our commitment to diversity.

In the rush to use boilerplate about allowing private prayer, the generic language proposed would throw out the entire part of the policy that addressed how to manage curriculum that touches on religion without making it into de facto celebration of religious holidays. I'm very glad that the BOE decided not to rush forward with the use of boilerplate, ignoring the extremely hard work that an earlier BOE did on this issue.

(Hoping I got this mostly right.  I'm sure you could find hundreds of old posts, with great passion on all sides, from when these debate was current -- but I'm less sure you want to spend hours reading them!)

Thanks. Makes perfect sense not to accept the boilerplate rules, then.

It was objection to a middle-school orchestral medley of Christmas carols--no singing, no words--that triggered the policy that is now apparently under review again. It was a long medley, it dominated the program, and noone disputed that the melodies might make people think of Christmas.

As I recall, the needle for the District to thread back then was how to be neutral.  The District was not to engage in a religious practice nor to be anti-religion.  Those might not be the right words.  It was a while ago, and I may be misremembering.  But after that, they just kept playing "Let It Snow."