From today's News-Gazette, a follow-up by Champaign Unit 4 School Board to discussions on here last week:
A Champaign school board member questioned whether allowing students an excused tardy for them to pray at school is justifiable.
The issue came up at a school board meeting Monday evening.
School board member Greg Novak said the issue is not one of school prayer, but of allowing the students to arrive late for class because they were praying.
Novak noted the biggest discipline problem at the Champaign high schools is tardiness. He said the district must remain neutral on the issue of school prayer, and he questioned whether it was doing so by allowing the excused tardies.
Discuss.
I don't think this is going to go over well with the other students.
I think the real issue is whether this accommodation remains at allowing students to be tardy. Some similar situations on college campuses have resulted in students asking for separate classrooms for male and female students--I wonder how far the law requires the school district to go.
Begin sarcasm:
Yah, I always got mad when my Jewish friends "skipped school" for Yom Kippur.
End sarcasm.
Jewish students get excused absences when they attend services for holy days. This really isn't any different. If other kids get mad about it, perhaps they should convert to another religion so they can get out of school. If that's something they get upset about, there's not much anyone can do about that. I was unaware that we made educational policy based on people's "feelings."
Jewish students get excused absences when they attend services for holy days. This really isn't any different.
A student that's absent a few extra days a year is far less disruptive than a student that every day shows up a few minutes after instruction begins.
As a kid I prayed for the school to close everyday. So now if a kid does this and arrives late, its an excused absence. Are the schools now for the education of our youth when they have time?
A disturbing inclusion was the attorney saying issues would be judged on a case by case basis. Scary and biased. It's unfair to the teacher and other students for students to disrupt the flow of the class and miss important information, beginning of tests, etc.
Get real, taking a day off school for Yom Kippur is entirely different from the constant disruption of being tardy. I appreciate Greg Novak for standing up for fairnness, amidst the P.C.
Being raised in a rural area, spring and fall farm duties caused some students to miss a few days of class. Also, some students missed schools for religious reasons. Parents wrote the excuses for these activities which the school administration monitored. Tardiness for a class, meant you were detained from either going home at the end of the school day or some non-academic activity for some period of time. Habitual tardiness resulted in a meeting with the parents on root cause.
If tardiness is a real wide spread problem, religion is neither the cause nor the issue, it was created by the school system (teachers, administration, BOE & parents). Students are just leveraging their behavior off this systemic failure which lawyers ill equiped to solve.
I still think this may violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. If only Muslim students are allowed to miss part of class, that is not being neutral on school prayer or religion. The school is only neutral if everyone gets to miss that same portion of class, whether to pray or not to pray.
My understanding was that parents were free to write kids out of school as long as there was not a truancy situation. Of course the students would have to make up any work.
Otherwise, I'm confused--what isit that you would like to see happen here? The kids are probably going to do whatever they or their parents think is right. Is that bad? It's funny to teach a ton of kids whose parents are not involved and face the challenges associated with that, and then watch a group of people trying to punish kids for being connected to their parents and faith.
If pray is so vital to your student/child, then consider private education. CU has many fine offerings where prayer is incorporated into the daily routine. Or even consider home school.
Greg Novak here – with several thoughts in no particular order as I climb on my soapbox this morning,
I have finally gotten around to registering for the Pundit under the name of roughriderfan – which is due to my respect for one Teddy Roosevelt – after all a man who wins the Medal of Honor AND the Nobel Peace Prize can’t be all bad. One of the reasons for my respect for Teddy is due to a comment he supposedly made – or at least it was quoted in a biography of him that I read long ago. Members of his family wanted Teddy to go into the reading of law – which would be a fine professional for a man of his stature. Teddy declined the opportunity to do so, pointing out that “lawyers do what is legal, and not necessarily what is right and fair.†As a member of the body political, that is something I try to practice – making sure we do what is “right and fair†as opposed to what is “legalâ€.
Monday night I attempted to raise an issue as I saw it as a matter of being “right and fair†for all students, and not just for a few. Two different lawyers for the district made it their opinion that the district should only look at this case in terms of the 1st Amendment – which does give the students the right to pray. In their view, the district needs to continue following the practice of daily excusing students to pray out of class time as a 1st Amendment issue.
In my mind the lawyers answered a question that was never asked – which was “are students allowed to pray in school?†because that was the question the district wanted answered. That was never the question asked, as in my mind the ability of students to pray in school on their time was an accepted fact. The issue of whether or not some students can be excused from class on a daily basis for religious reasons ended up being answered with yes – the district will decide what can be done on a case by case basis. In effect, Unit Four will now start determining what is a legitimate religious practice and what is not – a slippery slope that I do not think that any school system should do.
What remains in place is a directive that students should be treated differently for the same offense. After six years of changing educational policy, of changing discipline policy, of changing the grading system, of standardizing this and standardizing that, in requiring under the Consent Decree that ALL students in the district be treated the EXACT same way, we now will determine what we will do on A CASE BY CASE basis!!
I am one of seven people on the Board, and by myself I have no power or authority. I made my case and failed to gather any support – it is not the first time, nor will it be the last time that I stand up in a “lost causeâ€. There appears to be belief that members of a public board should not show any sign of unhappiness with their administration lest the community lose faith in either entity. Yet if issues are not raised publicly by members of such a body, what faith can the voting public have in their representatives?
It is among my duties to do several things – to provide oversight of the district for our voters, to see that our students get the best possible education, and to raise questions and concerns as I see them. To fail to do so means that I am ignoring my duty to my office and to those who elected me
Climbing off the soapbox now.
Greg Novak
Mr. Novak, with all due respect to the other board members, whether you show any disagreement with the administration or not has nothing to do with the public's support or lack thereof for the school district. Frankly, I think the biggest problem in the past has been that the school board has failed to challenge the administration on many of its decisions, resulting in a lack of faith and support in the school district.
Greg, you did a very good job trying to explain the whole picture to your fellow board members, one thing that some of your fellow board members fail to understand, is that there already is a fairly large segment of people that have lost faith in the school administration. Keep pitching! Eventually it will sink in to a few more members, A very sincere thanks from me for your honesty. Bruce
The worst teacher is the one that treats everyone the same.
So, Xian, how about some vouchers to solve this problem?
I believe that's a question that was answered by the Supreme Court long ago.
Great, so if a student says his religious beliefs say he has to have loud rap music playing at all times, well then, who is the school system to determine what a legitimate religious practice is? If school administrators can't be trusted to excercise any reasonable judgement about what is and is not a disruption to the school day, then maybe they should be replaced with administrators that can. Or, if they can't be allowed to exercise any judgement at all, perhaps they can be replaced with computers.
Narc said: Great, so if a student says his religious beliefs say he has to have loud rap music playing at all times, well then, who is the school system to determine what a legitimate religious practice is?
This is problematic to me, because it relies on a public official to pass judgement on the legitimacy of a religious practice or belief. Isn't this exactly the sort of governmental preference of one religion over another that's forbidden by the Establishment clause of the First Amendment?
I'm still not understanding what your point is. Schools should not favor religious schools--I think we can agree on that. However, are we really trying to argue that schools should not adjust to the individual needs of the students?
Students are excused with parental permission for tardiness all the time. Are you opposed to that too?
The point was offered: Great, so if a student says his religious beliefs say he has to have loud rap music playing at all times, well then, who is the school system to determine what a legitimate religious practice is?
No, this would not be allowed, Loud rap music would be likely considered to be disruptive and would infringe on the rights of others. I'm copying a paragaph from the First Amemdment Center's FAQ on Religious Liberty in Public Schools www.firstamendmentcenter.org/rel_liberty/publicschools
" . . the Supreme Court has never outlawed 'prayer in schools'. Students are free to pray alone or in groups , as long as such prayers are not disruptive and do not infringe upon the rights of others.But this right “to engage in voluntary prayer does not include the right to have a captive audience listen or to compel other students to participate.” (This is the language supported by a broad range of civil liberties and religious groups in a joint statement of current law.)"
If Muslim students prayer is not disruptive--and I have read no evidence that it is--why do we need to make a big deal about it?
I do understand about tardies, but as a former teacher, I can assure you that I would not have had difficulty from a classroom mgt perspective with a situation arranged in advance that resulted in a a student coming in to class quietly a few minutes late and getting quickly settled. And, it wouldn't have mattered why--whether they were diabetic and having their blood sugar checked, needed to take ADHD medication, or were participating in prayer important to them. I'd consider this sort of thing just basic human respect and kindness.
As an observer of the activities at one of the grade schools in Champaign I can tell you that there are A LOT of reasons that kids are late, absent, leave early, and generally wander in and out of class. The class my nephew is in never seems to have a static class situation and as for coming and going quietly....ha, forget that. Kids don't really do that very well it seems. The days of kids sitting in nice straight little rows, facing the front of the class, sitting quietly while the authority figure in the front of the class speaks, is long, long gone. The atmosphere is decidely more casual, and therefore a bit of tardiness at the start of class or whenever, is probably not an issue....whatever the reason.
My understanding was that parents were free to write kids out of school as long as there was not a truancy situation. Of course the students would have to make up any work.
So what happens when the teacher starts teaching and the student misses the instruction? Mark my words, now it's the teacher's burden (you can't make up that work). Or coming late to the beginning of an exam. I expect my students to be in class on time because I don't have them very long for that period. It shorts the first period and it makes a difference! I start teaching immediately. They don't sit on the rug for group time.
The atmosphere is decidely more casual, and therefore a bit of tardiness at the start of class or whenever, is probably not an issue....whatever the reason.
Wow, this attitude is exactly the reason it's so tough to teach today. And when you're an adult, tell that to your boss... I am late to work when I want but I learned it didn't matter....deal with it.
The worst teacher is the one that treats everyone the same.
The best teacher doesn't treat each student the same for purposes of education. Each learns differently and I appreciate and accommodate those differences. BUT, we must be even-handed.