School Community

A New York City school system rule barring the use of public schools for weekend religious worship services does not violate the First Amendment rights of a Christian church, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.

If that conclusion sounds familiar, it’s because the controversy between the Bronx Household of Faith and the New York City school district has been raging since 1994. In the first lawsuit, both a federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit upheld the school system’s refusal to rent a school to the church, and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case in 1998.

Later, the Supreme Court’s 2001 ruling in Good News Club v. Milford Central School prompted the church to try anew. In Good News, the high court held that it was unconstitutional for a school district to bar a private Christian group from after-school use of its facilities when it opened them to a wide range of other community uses.

In 2002, Bronx Household of Faith was granted an injunction allowing it to use Public School 15 for its Sunday worship services, and it has been doing so since then while its second legal challenge has proceeded on the merits. The school system now defends its efforts to deny access based on a 2007 rule that prohibits using school buildings for worship services.

A federal district court granted a permanent injunction to the church. But in a 2-1 ruling on June 2, a 2nd Circuit panel ruled for the school system. The majority said the school system had valid, non-viewpoint discriminatory reasons for barring worship services even when it allowed certain other religious activities in its facilities.

“The board could … reasonably worry that the regular, long-term conversion of schools into state-subsidized churches on Sundays would violate the Establishment Clause by reason of public perception of endorsement,” said the 2nd Circuit majority in Bronx Household of Faith v. New York City Board of Education. “A worship service is an act of organized religion that consecrates the place in which it is performed, making it a church. … Bronx Household and the other churches that have been allowed access under the injunction tend to dominate the schools on the day they use them.”

Writing in dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge John M. Walker Jr. said the school system’s rule against allowing religious worship services “is impermissible viewpoint discrimination against protected speech and is unsupported by a compelling state interest. In this case, Bronx Household’s worship services fit easily within the purposes of the board’s broadly available forum and may not be the object of discrimination based upon the religious viewpoint expressed by the services’ participants.”

Walker said the majority’s ruling could not be squared with Supreme Court decisions on religious viewpoint discrimination, and he said the case presented “important doctrinal considerations worthy of the Supreme Court’s attention.”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday sidestepped an important test of whether in-school interviews of students by the police and other authorities require a warrant, ruling that the case—involving the questioning of an Oregon girl by authorities who believed she was a victim of sexual abuse at home—was moot.

However, without deciding the merits of the issue, the court set aside part of a federal appeals court ruling that the Fourth Amendment required investigators to have a warrant or parental consent before interviewing students in school.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority in Camreta v. Greene , said that because the young woman at the center of the case no longer lived in Oregon and would soon graduate from high school, she no longer faced the prospect of a warrantless police interview in school.

“When subsequent events make it absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur, we have no live controversy to review,” Justice Kagan said in an opinion joined by four of her colleagues. The overall judgment was 7-2.

The case was prompted by the ordeal of a girl identified in court papers as S.G. In 2003, 9-year-old S.G. was pulled from her Bend, Ore., classroom, taken to a school office, and interviewed by a state child-protective-services caseworker and a deputy sheriff.

The authorities suspected the girl was being sexually abused at home. After lengthy questioning, the girl told the investigators that she had been touched inappropriately by her father. The girl and her sister were briefly removed from their home, but criminal charges against the father were later dismissed. The father accepted a plea agreement over abuse charges involving another child.

S.G.’s mother sued not only the investigators who questioned her daughter, but also the Bend-La Pine school district and the school counselor who had removed the girl from class. The school defendants were dismissed early in the case. The mother said in court papers that only after two hours of denying any abuse did S.G. tell the investigators what the girl believed they wanted to hear—that her father had touched her improperly.

The suit led to a 2009 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, in San Francisco, that S.G.’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated because she had been seized in the absence of a warrant, parental consent, or other special circumstances.

This led to a procedurally messy appeal to the Supreme Court by the investigators, a state child-abuse caseworker and a deputy sheriffs, who were granted qualified immunity from liability in this case but said they would be hampered by the rule requiring a warrant or parental consent in future school interviews of suspected abuse victims.

In her May 26 opinion, Justice Kagan said the high court could review a lower court’s ruling on a constitutional issue even when the appeal was brought by officials who were deemed to have qualified immunity in the case. That issue alone is important in the field of public education, in which many suits challenging school policies and actions are resolved on immunity grounds but often also involve a ruling on the merits of a constitutional issue.

Justice Kagan said the court was bending its usual rule that bars prevailing parties, such as the officials who won immunity in this case, from appealing to the high court. She said qualified-immunity rulings in cases in which lower courts also rule on constitutional issues “have a significant future effect on the conduct of public officials—both the prevailing parties and their co-workers—and the policies of the government units to which they belong.”

Kagan said that after granting review of the case, the court learned that S.G. had moved to Florida. The teenager is now approaching her 18th birthday and presumably about to graduate from high school, Kagan said.

“S.G. therefore cannot be affected by the Court of Appeals’ ruling,” Kagan said. “She faces not the slightest possibility of being seized in a school in the 9th Circuit’s jurisdiction as part of a child abuse investigation.”

Kagan said the mootness of S.G.’s underlying case in turn has frustrated the appeal rights of the investigators to challenge the 9th Circuit’s constitutional ruling.

The majority vacated that part of the 9th Circuit ruling, which is significant in that it removes, for now, the requirement that warrants or parental consent are required for in-school interviews.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Justice Kagan’s opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor filed an opinion, joined by Justice Stephen G. Breyer, saying she agreed the case was moot, but she would not have reached the issue of whether the officials granted immunity in this case had the right to appeal.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, said that clarification of the court’s principles on qualified immunity and constitutional rulings was in order, but that in this case he would have dismissed the appeal.

“It is most doubtful that Article III [of the Constitution] permits appeals by any officer to whom the reasoning of a judicial decision might be applied in a later suit,” Justice Kennedy said. “Yet that appears to be the implication of the court’s holding.”

I first read a transcript of this school voicemail parody a while back but had not heard a video rendition of it.

An obvious spoof, the voicemail purportedly from an Australian school offers parents such options as  To make excuses why your child didnt do his homework work, press 2 and If you us to raise your child, press 6.

Enjoy this Memorial Day weekend and this lampoon:

Ben Meyers is not your ordinary high school teacher. Meyers, a teacher at Shenendehowa High School also runs his own website on the side.

Founder and editor of SaratogaCountySports.com, Meyers visited The College of Saint Rose this week as our Teen V Productions guest. Meyers discusses his start in the world of journalism and the adventures of running his own website. Meyers covers everything from high school athletics, to Skidmore College, all the way to live coverage of Tim Stauffers Major League Baseball starts. If you would like to contact Ben send him an email at saratogacountysports@gmail.com.

In Stefanie Baker’s second grade class, classmates at the City View Charter School explore sensory perception through taste. SALEM –With public schools closing, school years shortening and teachers being laid off, money is the No. 1 education issue on state lawmakers’ agenda. But there’s another education topic gobbling up just as much time in Salem — charter schools.

Charter schools, which are semi-independent public schools, serve only 3 percent of Oregon’s public school students. But the debate over them has eaten time, stirred ideological rancor and stalled other education issues, not just for this year’s Legislature but for the past several years.

This session, lawmakers have held nearly two dozen hearings and work sessions, with only one charter school bill successfully moved through a legislative chamber. Over the past five years, legislators have proposed more than 40 bills that focus on charter schools, debated them in more than 60 meetings, and passed only five laws, three of which had little impact on the way schools operate.

Supporters say charters are a key avenue of education reform and need room and resources to grow. Skeptics say charters destabilize traditional schools and don’t yield better student achievement. But both supporters and critics are frustrated with the Legislature’s record and say state leaders have let the issue be overrun by political wrangling.

Rep. Betty Komp, one of the co-chairs of the Joint Ways and Means education subcommittee and a member of the policy-writing education committee, said the state has bigger education needs and issues than those raised around charters.

“How do we keep kids in school and have them ready for the workforce we so desperately need?” the Woodburn Democrat asked. “That’s the question we need to be asking.”

House Education Co-Chairman Matt Wingard calls charter schools the only type of education reform the state has really embraced and defends the time spent on them.  
“We weren’t even having the conversation about these options in the past sessions,” says Wingard, who also heads a public relations firm that contracts with the state’s largest online charter school. “Ultimately, the conversations are not enough. We do want to see some of these reforms in Oregon. But having the conversation at all, that is an important step, it’s where we start.”

The other education co-chair, Corvallis Democrat Sara Gelser, spent months gearing up for what she hoped would be a final resolution on how online charter schools should operate in Oregon their size, their funding and their enrollment restrictions.

But she admits that there has not been a lot of discussion about the bill she sponsored which was based on recommendations from the Oregon Board of Education, and that there’s little likelihood that there will be enough political will to push it forward this session.

“I am disappointed we haven’t been able to do more for parents and kids to give them certainty,” Gelser said. “I really wanted to work. But I haven’t been able to find a partner that’s willing to put good policy above politics.”

Gelser’s frustration reflects both the partisan politics of the evenly split House and the ideological differences between those who want to give more power to charter schools and those who contend they need to be more tightly regulated.

Charter school parents say they want to see state leaders give families clear answers and direction on what charter schools, both traditional and online will look like in Oregon. Every year, the state’s two oldest full-time online charter schools must petition the state for waivers to continue operating while they wait for a permanent legislative solution.

Families are paying the price for legislators’ inaction, says Cindy McGraw, who leads a statewide online charter school parent group.

“I think we started making headway, but it’s been tough,” she said. “It’s tough to look at what has been put into this issue versus what we’ve gotten out, both as a parent and a taxpayer. It’s like paying $10 and only getting 1 gallon of gas.”

Kaaren Heikes, executive director of the Northwest Center for Education Options, said the charter school debate has been dominated by political extremes. That overshadows the fact that most charter school supporters are in the middle and open to discussion.

“The political polarization has only marginalized the thousands of kids, parents and teachers who are working in those schools,” said Heikes, whose group represents most of the state’s 108 charter schools.

Heikes was among more than one dozen education stakeholders from around the state who met in 2010 to discuss Oregon’s 11-year-old charter school law and make recommendations for the future. The school board members, teachers, district officials and parents couldn’t agree on more than minor changes to update the law and smooth the application process. But even that legislation, Senate Bill 255, is hung up in the House Rules committee after passing unanimously in the Senate.

As lawmakers get more focused on hashing out the details of the state budget, charter school policy issues are likely to take a back seat.

Some say that’s a good idea.

Chuck Bennett, government relations director of the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators, says lawmakers have spent more time on charter schools than necessary and need to stay focused on education funding and equipping schools with the freedom, training and tools they need to reach kids.

“We’ve got huge issues to address in public education,” Bennett said. “Charter schools is not one of them.”

And some argue that the debate over size limits, money and structure have obscured the major issues that should be explored about the state’s charter school effort:  innovative teaching techniques and improved achievement for kids.

Rep. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, says the truly important discussions about charter schools have been essentially hijacked by lobbying power and politics.

“We’re seeing the classic clash of special interests,” he said, “and the kids of the state are paying for it.”