Posted on 08/28/2014 9:35:37 AM PDT by walford
N4T Investigators: Church and State
Tucson - It's 12:40 in the afternoon, and in the Islamic Center of Tucson, a time to pray.
Muslims have a strict daily prayer schedule, five times a day at specific times. One of those times is in the middle of the school day.
In a room off the library at Desert View High School, four to six Muslim students pray during every school day for about 10 minutes. Sunnyside Unified School District officials tell the News 4 Tucson Investigators that all but one of the students pray during their lunch period, the other misses a few minutes of a class.
Community activist Richard Hernandez doesn't have a problem with allowing prayer, but with how the administration handled it.
"They failed to let the community know what was going on," Hernandez said. He thinks the the district should've told parents before-hand.
"Anything that happens to your child, it is this obligation of this school, and any school district in Pima County, to tell the parents," Hernandez said.
Our policy is very clear about allowing and accommodating this.
Sunnyside Schools Acting Superintendent Dr. Eugenia Favela told us she hasn't directly received a single complaint about allowing school prayer, she only heard about complaints second-hand. She says she didn't think a public notice sent to parents was needed to inform them that a few students were praying in a separate room. Favela was first told about the current prayer group in an email this month from a Desert View principal.
SUSD's Freedom of Expression policy states: "Students are to be permitted to pray or engage in religious activities or expression in the same manner and to the same extent as students are permitted to engage in non-religious activities or expression, before, during and after the school day."
Favela told the News 4 Tucson Investigators, "Our policy is very clear about allowing and accommodating this. It is not a violation in the sense that we are not promoting it. It would be a violation of church and state issues if we were promoting these views."
There has been significant confusion and misinformation about prayer in schools; some people think it's not allowed. That's partly because the Supreme Court in 1962 ruled that official prayer had no place in public education. But the Court did not rule that students are forbidden to pray on their own, it removed only government or school-sponsored prayer.
Alex Luchenitser is an Associate Legal Director with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. He says,"The separation of church and state prohibits schools from promoting religion. This probably does not present any constitutional problem as long as the same accommodation would be given to any other religion."
Dr. Favela says if any students wanted to have a group of non-religious activity, the district would need to accommodate them. She says if any parent has a question about the praying going on at Desert View, she'd be happy to answer them, just contact her office.
Remember if you have a story you'd like us to investigate, email us at investigators @kvoa.com, or call our tip line, 520-955-4444.
Now is the time for churches to act. Demand prayer time in an individual room as well.
What do they do in shop class? Build bombs?
One school suspends a girl for saying, “Bless you...” when someone sneezed...
This school allows only Muzzies to pray...
We have got to take our country back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wonder what would happen if several students went into the room and recited the Rosary?
The Farmer and the Snake
Aesop’s Fables Translated by George Fyler Townsend
One winter a Farmer found a Snake stiff and frozen with cold. He had compassion on it, and taking it up, placed it in his bosom. The Snake was quickly revived by the warmth, and resuming its natural instincts, bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound. “Oh,” cried the Farmer with his last breath, “I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.”
The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.
because Christians don’t make and enforce the “rules” of their religion with throat cutting and beheading?
Yeah. And the kid who says “bless you” is expelled. What the (fornicate) is happening in this country? Educators kissing the a$$ of bearded savages who hate us?
Satan shows his hand so many times when he has his followers (sometimes they are his followers unbeknownst to themselves) attack Jesus, but not false gods.
Our preacher used to say, “Nobody kicks a dead dog”. They've been attacking Jesus and the Bible for thousands of years, but God keeps the message flowing.
Israel cannot be destroyed no matter how many Muslims come after them.
Jesus is the ONLY way to God the Father and Satan knows this. That's why Communists and other Government Supremacists try to keep His name out of everything. They know who the King really is, but they do not want to admit it.
Do they allow Christian prayers?
As I noted in my first comment, the Left doesn’t mind facilitating Islamists worshiping the bloodthirsty war-demon they worship.
Yes, they hang homosexuals, stone women to death, force little girls to have sex with grown men, etc. but their mutual hatred they share for capitalism and the United States trumps all.
Where is the ACLU to decry “Separation of Church and State”?
What they really mean by that is "Separation of Christianity and State."
Fertile ground for ISIS to grow in.
Typical for Tucson
Yep, I am finding more and more reasons to stay away from Tucson.
A group of Catholic kids should demand space to say the Chaplet of Divine Mercy every day. “For the sake of His Sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world.”
That’s OK. It’s political expression anyway, not religious.
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