Parental Objections May Challenge Schools’ Release-for-Religion Rule

In a faltering voice, a mother rose to address the Orange Unified School Board.

She was not against religion or religious education, the mother explained carefully. But she worried about how teaching of religion during public school hours affects education, especially for those children, like hers, not taking part in Bible study.

Thus began a controversy that is still unfolding in Orange Unified School District--a dispute over religion during class hours that potentially affects all of California.

At issue is a 43-year-old state law that permits a school district to release children from their classrooms for Bible study and other religious instruction. Seldom questioned in the past, the law now faces a challenge from the heart of California’s most conservative urban county.

‘My Conscience Dictates’

The current controversy arose at an Oct. 23 Orange Unified School Board meeting as the result of questions raised by Rochelle Maynard of Orange, who has a daughter in the fourth grade. Holding a prepared statement in hands that trembled as she spoke, Maynard said: “My conscience dictates that I state . . . my opposition to the religious-release time in Orange Unified and wherever else it still exists.�

She added that she had “no argument with the need for moral and Christian virtues in our youth. I only ask that they do it on their own time and not flaunt religion where it is not appropriate.�

“Any open-minded person,� she said, “would recognize the blatant and subtle discrimination involved.�

During the long existence of the obscure state law that permits religious-release time during public school hours, occasional disputes, prompted most often by civil libertarians, have emerged. A California Court of Appeal has upheld the law as constitutional. The law has never been challenged in a federal court, but a similar law in the state of New York has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the California attorney general’s office.

Existed for 33 Years

In Orange Unfied School District, which serves the cities of Orange and Villa Park and parts of Anaheim, Garden Grove and Santa Ana, religious-release-time programs have existed for 33 years. Now board members must decide whether the district should continue or drop the policy that allows fourth- and fifth-graders to walk from their classrooms one day a week to a trailer parked off school grounds. Inside the trailer, which is moved from school to school in the district on specific days, the students listen to religious teachers who discuss the Bible and morals. It is a Protestant program.

Currently in Orange Unified there are about 3,200 fourth- and fifth-graders, and about half of those have parental permission to take part in the 40-minute religious release classes. Students whose parents do not want them to participate in the program remain in their regular classroom, awaiting the return of their classmates.

There are four other school districts in Orange County with such programs--Anaheim City Elementary, Magnolia Elementary, Yorba Linda Elementary and Fullerton Elementary. Many other public school districts in the state also have such programs. The largest is in Los Angeles Unified School District.

Bill Rivera, spokesman for the Los Angeles district, said that religious-release programs have operated in the district for more than 40 years--virtually since the law was enacted in 1943.

‘High Participation’

“We’ve had no problem with it,� Rivera said. “Almost all of the religious faiths take part, and we have a high participation rate, although I don’t have current figures.�

Maynard’s questions prompted the Orange Unified School District board to discuss the program at its Nov. 13 meeting, which drew a cluster of speakers on both sides of the issue. Afterward, the board appointed a 15-member committee to study release-time programs and report back to the board by June.

A defender of the program is Carole Johnson, who is in charge of religious-release instruction in the Orange Unified district. “We are a staff of credentialed teachers, using the Bible as our text,� she said. “We memorize Bible passages carefully chosen. . . . We do not teach church doctrine.�

Johnson, who works with 14 other privately paid Christian education teachers who go from school to school in the district, said the release-time program has “enriched the lives of fourth- and fifth-grade students. . . .�

“Over 60% (of the children) have not had prior exposure to the Bible and its teachings,� she said.

Churches Pay Teachers

In an interview, Johnson said the program in the Orange district is financed by 19 participating churches, has a yearly budget “in the $60,000 range� and pays its Christian education teachers according to the number of days and classes they teach. The state law does not require that the religious-release teachers be credentialed, but Johnson noted that the teachers in her program all have teaching credentials, some from other states.

Johnson said she did not want to specify how much individual teachers make in the program, but she said it is a small amount.

“It’s only about one-third as much as a substitute teacher can make,� she said. Substitute teachers in Orange Unified School District are paid $68 a day and long-term substitutes earn $78, under a pay scale which will become effective Jan. 1.

Carol Saukkola, a parent in favor of the religious education program, said: “There is absolutely no encouragement by the school to participate in this community-sponsored program but, on the other hand, allowing it to exist indicates to the community that the school is concerned for the welfare of the whole child, including his spiritual welfare if his parents so choose.�

Opponents of religious-release time told the school board that they are not anti-Bible or anti-religion. Their central argument was that religious education should not be conducted during public school hours.

Complain of Pressure

One parent complained about pressure that the program places on children who do not take part.

“For a 9-year-old who watches her friends attend a weekly session, and then has to explain to her friends why she doesn’t attend, it can be very traumatic,� said Steven Edelman, the parent of a fourth-grade student and the Orange County regional director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. “Kids should not be exposed to additional pressure because of their religious belief.�

The ADL monitors discrimination against people of the Jewish faith and other minorities. Edelman told the school board that the ADL has for some time been concerned that Orange Unified School District allows the elementary schools to conduct the waste-newspaper drives to help pay for the religious-release program. He said he believes that “fund raising that is carried on by a school to subsidize a ‘Chapel on Wheels’ is clearly violative of church and state separation.�

Parents who oppose the program argue that children not taking religious instruction have 40 minutes of wasted education time, a point denied by Johnson and other supporters of the program. “Students who remain in their classes work on their spelling words and do other things the teacher assigns them,� Johnson said.

ACLU Cites Intrusion

But the California chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union deplore the religious-release program because of its intrusion in regular class time.

“We wouldn’t mind if the children went to these (religion) classes immediately after school, but significantly, supporters of the program don’t want to have it that way,� said Margaret Crosby, a staff attorney with ACLU’s Northern California office in San Francisco. She said the ACLU believes that an element of “coercion� and “peer pressure� enters in the existing religious-release system because children who do not leave the class for religious instruction “stand out as pagans or little atheists.�

Crosby, however, said the ACLU has mounted no legal challenges to the law in recent years.

Helen Colburn, a religion teacher who supervises religious-release time programs serving both the Anaheim City Elementary and Magnolia Elementary school districts, said her program came under attack by some parents two years ago “and we had to defend ourselves to the (school) board.�

Jewish Parents Oppose

In the past, Colburn said, some Jewish parents have opposed religious-release time in the school districts. She said that she tries to inform Jewish parents that they also can make use of release time for their own religious instruction. And she noted that Roman Catholics have a separate trailer that parks off school grounds in Anaheim City Elementary School District to teach during release time. Another trailer is for interfaith instruction, Colburn said.

In Sacramento, officials of the state Department of Education said that religious-release programs currently cause almost no ripples in the state.

“The only place where controversy is coming from is in Orange County, as far as I know,� said James Smith, a deputy superintendent at the state Department of Education.