School to skirt rule by singing prayers

State Rep. Justin Harris said children at his West Fork preschool will sing a prayer song before lunch each day instead of being led in a spoken prayer.

That way the preschool, Growing God’s Kingdom, will be in compliance with a new rule banning religious activity in state-funded preschools, he said. The rule was approved Friday and goes into effect Oct. 26.

“It just dawned on me that, well, we could sing our prayer,” said Harris, aRepublican. “We have a song that’s a prayer, and that’s what we’re going to use before we eat.”

Attorneys for two state agencies involved in the issue don’t consider singing a religious activity, Harris said.

The song Harris intends for students to sing is called “God Our Father.” In the song, this line is repeated several times: “God, our Father, we thank you for our many blessings.”

Others disagree with Harris’ interpretation of the new rule.

“If he continues to do that, he will lose his funding, if he wants to push it,” said state Rep. Johnnie Roebuck, D-Arkadelphia. “Mr. Harris is using this, I think, as a political ploy, wanting to get some airtime for it. I think it’s unconscionable to use those children in that way.”

Amy Webb, a spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Human Services, said noone at her agency approved daily prayer songs at statefunded preschools.

“I do not recall any instance in which we said that leading the children in a song that is a prayer before lunch would be allowed,” she said. “In fact, I remember us specifically saying that prayer was an inherently religious activity that could not occur during the seven-hour [school] day or with public funds.”

The new rule bans religious activities at preschools that receive funds from the Arkansas Better Chance Program, a state-funded preschool program for low-income families. The rule defines prayer as a religious activity but allows religious music under certain circumstances.

Growing God’s Kingdom has received $2.6 million in Arkansas Better Chance grants since 2005. Growing God’s Kingdom received $534,600 in Arkansas Better Chance funding to serve 110 students this year, according to state records.

The new rule states: “All [Arkansas Better Chance] instruction and instruction materials must be secular and neutral with respect to religion. No religious activity may occur during any ABC day, and no ABC funds may be used to support religious services, instruction or programming at any time.”

Webb said Breck Hopkins, general counsel for HumanServices, had made it clear that religious ceremonies can’t be performed under the guise of study.

The rule was hammered out by lawyers from the Arkansas departments of Education and Human Services after a Washington, D.C., organization filed a complaint last year saying Growing God’s Kingdom had been using state money to fund religious instruction, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The rule has been through a required public comment period and three legislative committee approval meetings.

Roebuck, vice chairman of the House Education Committee, said the rule was discussed for more than three hours at a joint education committee meeting Sept. 17. It was then approved by the administrative rules and regulations committee the next day.

Final approval from the Arkansas Legislative Council came Friday. Votes weren’t taken because the committees were reviewing the rule rather than reconsidering it, Roebuck said. All three of those meetings were in Little Rock.

Roebuck said she told Harris at those meetings that the new rule was intended to protect parents.

“I don’t want my child going to school and somebody telling my child who to worship,” Roebuck said. “That’s my job.”

Ian Smith, an attorney for Americans United for Separation of Church and State,which filed the complaint, said Harris is wrong about the prayer song.

“I have no idea why he thinks this is allowed when the regulations clearly state that he cannot do this,” Smith said. “If he insists upon continuing with this behavior, then the state needs to take away his [Arkansas Better Chance] funding.”

Harris said, as he understands it, the new rule allows singing of Christian songs, as long as children are led in singing the same number of secular songs. Harris based that on the Sept. 17 and 18 committee meetings in which attorneys for the departments of Education and Human Services spoke.

Smith said Harris’ argument about the songs is based on a couple of court cases that allowed the singing of religious songs in public school choir programs.

“The idea is that you can’t teach Western choral music without running into songs that have religious content, since for several hundred years almost every significant piece of choral and orchestral music had religious themes,” Smith said in an email. “What the courts have said is that you can have religious songs if the songs [are] chosen for a secular reason and the choir program as a whole is secular.”

Harris’ proposed use of the songs “would still fail the test because he chooses the song because he wants to teach kids about Jesus, not because he wants to teach them a particular vocal technique found in Handel’s Messiah,” Smith wrote.

Webb said the new rule would allow for religious songs to be sung under certain circumstances, such as in holiday program.

Harris said the rule also allows him to leave Bible verses and crosses on the wall as long as they aren’t used for religious instruction. Harris said he considered parts of the new rule a “victory” for his side.

Smith said his organization was disappointed that Arkansas allowed the preschools to keep religious materials on the wall, but the state is following federal guidelines for federally funded programs, and other states also do that.

“We feel that those guidelines are wrong and that any program receiving government funding should not be allowed to surround program participants with religious materials, but that’s something that we are going to need to address in a broader way in the coming years.”

Harris said prayer and a Bible lesson were part of the school day before the new rule was drafted. The Bible lesson will be held in the school building after the seven-hour school day is over, he said.

Roebuck said Sen. Johnny Key, R-Mountain Home, who owns two preschools, plans to comply with the new rule. He couldn’t be reached for comment.

Citizens United also filed a complaint against Key’s preschools.

Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 09/29/2012

Upcoming Events