Posted on 03/19/2017 9:09:23 AM PDT by Mr. Mojo
A prayer room at a Texas high school is raising legal concerns and the state’s attorney general’s office in a letter on Friday to school district’s superintendent indicated the school’s policy should be neutral toward religion.
Liberty High School’s prayer room, which is reportedly dedicated to students who practice Islam, allows the students to pray at the school on Fridays instead of leaving to say their required prayers. The letter cites the school’s own news site, which focused on the prayer room.
In a letter Friday to the the Frisco Independent School District, the Texas attorney general’s office outlined the legal concerns over the prayer room, indicating it may violate the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty.
“Liberty High School’s policy should be neutral toward religion,” the letter from Deputy Attorney General Andrew Leonie to Superintendent Jeremy Lyons said. “However, it appears that students are being treated different based on their religious beliefs. Such a practice, of course, is irreconcilable with our nation’s enduring commitment to religious liberty.”
Sponsored Links by The letter congratulates the school’s effort to create an environment where students can practice their religion, and the high school’s various student-led religious groups. “Your willingness to guarantee the freedom of student-led religious groups is laudable,” the letter states, but also points out the words of the U.S. Supreme Court: ‘One religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another.’”
“Reports from Liberty’s news site indicate that the prayer room is not available to students of all faiths. Instead, it appears that the prayer room is ‘dedicated to the religious needs of some students,’ namely those who practice Islam,” the letter reads.
The school’s news site, in its coverage of the prayer room, interviewed the principal of Liberty High School.
“This is my seventh year at Liberty, my first year it kind of started when a core group of students were leaving campus every Friday for Friday prayer,” said Principal Scott Warstler.
“Their parents would come pick them up, so they may miss an hour and a half to two hours to two and a half hours of school every Friday, so I met with those students and a couple of their parents and suggested if they would be okay if the students were able to lead the prayer at school as a group, and we gave them a space to do that so they didn’t have to be in a car traveling thirty minutes each way on a Friday missing an hour, hour and a half, of class,” said Warstler.
Leonie asks that school officials to ensure the prayer room is accessible to all students of all religious denominations.
Encourage every parent that you meet to try to find a way to homeschool. There are many examples of families ( even single parent families) who have found a way to homeschool successfully through seemingly impossible circumstances.
Did you read my post #49 and shvagesusie's post #41?
I realize that the idea that government schooling can not be religiously neutral is a novel idea for most. It is a fundamental concept, though, that will lead to a constitutional solution.
Our First Amendment upholds our God-given right to free assembly and exercise of religion. The very fact that parents are under police threat to send their children into the company of adults and children who **will** work to undermine their religious beliefs is an abomination.
Also...Government schooling is religiously a godless schooling. Godless schooling is no more religiously neutral in content or consequences than God-centered schooling. Both worldviews ( godless and God-centered) have non-neutral content and consequences.
The solution: Begin the process of privatizing all schooling. Work toward complete separation of school and state.
The school district will just rearrange the school hours so that these few kids are accommodated. That's my prediction.
I homeschooled four. I worked around their schooling and was a single parent for about 75% of the time they needed schooling.
I recommend that anyone who wants to homeschool find 5 like minded families and have each family take the kids one day a week. Agree on curriculum and teach each subject twice a week. this sort of informal schooling can be great as kids get together and learn together. We did this a few years starting by two to three hours of reading at home, then to the group for the rest of the day.
Don’t do it alone if you can help it.
See! There are many success stories like yours.
Congratulations!
Start with good material
I would not let a dog of mine go to the public schools. The homeschool kids I know are all adults and they stand head and shoulders above the other public school kids. The least successful of my children is the one who moved to her father’s and was publicly schooled for the last 4 years of school. Although the work ethic is good.
That was going to be my comment as well - they have allowed these students to leave school every friday without any consequence? And now they allow them 20 or 30 minutes to pray? Have they also provided a place to wash their feet like the U of Wisconsin?
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