By Terry Witt – Spotlight Senior Reporter
Students have always been allowed to express their religious views in Levy County public schools, but a draft policy written by Tallahassee lawyers and lawmakers literally spells the rules for religious speech in the future.
“A student may pray or engage in religious activities or religious expression before, during and after the school day in the same manner and to the same extent that a student may engage in secular activities or expression,” one paragraph of the policy states.
That’s the easy part. But there’s more to the policy.
Levy School Board members voted 4-0 Tuesday morning to advertise the policy on “Religious Expression in Public Schools” along with four other policies, three of which originated in Tallahassee.
Board members were asked by Spotlight whether students have freedom to state their religious views when dealing with class assignments related to science.
The answer was a qualified, “yes.”
The school board has no plans to air the policies in public hearings. Superintendent Jeff Edison said the policies will be available for discussion at every school board meeting until they are adopted. The full policies are posted in the minutes of Tuesday’s meeting on the school board website.
Assistant Superintendent John Lott said the policies will be adopted in December.
The board was asked what would happen if a student wrote his or her religious views regarding the spiritual creation of life when they were asked by a teacher to explain the scientific view of how life begins.
Board attorney Brian Delaney gave the answer.
“I think the student is going to be required to demonstrate the information that’s in the curriculum mapping; it’s on the knowledge you’ve got and being able to demonstrate it,” Delaney said. “If they want to have additional commentary on what their personal beliefs are, they’re not going to get marked down for their personal beliefs, but students are still going to be required to demonstrate mastery of the content of the class.”
One paragraph of the policy contains a phrase that had no obvious meaning. Delaney offered to interpret.
The paragraph in question said, “The School Board of Levy County will treat a student’s voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject in the same manner that a school district treats a student’s voluntary expression of a secular viewpoint.” Delaney was asked to interpret the meaning of the phrase – “on an otherwise permissible subject.” What does it mean?
Delaney replied:
“If a student is given an assignment dealing with the Middle Ages they can certainly include in that the influence of church, the Reformation, the Catholic Church and there are all those issues,” he said. “If they are assigned a personal essay and they want to talk about an individual person in their life…they are allowed to do that under this policy, but they were always allowed to do that under the First Amendment.”
Spotlight commented that in times past there had been discussion of secularizing public schools and taking God out of classrooms. The draft policy appears to be putting religion back in schools.
Board member Rick Turner responded.
“The problem with that is that the other side can do the same thing. If I wear a shirt or something that has a cross on it, they can turn around and wear a shirt with the devil’s trident etc. It goes both ways. They are covering themselves in my opinion,” Turner said.
School Board member Chris Cowart said the school district has always allowed freedom of religious speech on campuses.
“I don’t think there’s ever been any limit as far as the county, so I think this is maybe a souped-up version and that would be a nice way to put it,” Cowart said.
One new requirement in the policy is that there must be a disclaimer in student speeches at graduation ceremonies stating the speech reflects the personal views of the student.
“That’s something that would be a change,” Lott said. “The way we’ve done things in the past, at least in my experience as a principal, we never had to put a disclaimer in a graduation program, but that’s the result of this legislation.”
The policy applies to student speeches in any location or at any event, not just graduation, according to Lott.
Delaney said the best way to meet that requirement is to place a written disclaimer in the graduation program.
“Tallahassee has delivered this policy up to us and said you have to adopt it,” he said. “There are a few portions in here – that is what the Legislature would like the law to be and maybe what some courts have said the law is, which could present challenges down the road. The simple thing to do is have two lines in the graduation program under the valedictorian speech saying the intent of the speech reflects the student’s own views and not those of the district.”
“We’re not going to restrict a student to be able to talk about their religious beliefs as part of the valedictorian speech. The policy and the statute check that. That’s appropriate. But at the same time, we’re going to make it clear that the only way the district is going to approve someone for a speech – if it is a religious speech – is we’re going to say it is the student’s speech.”
The policy also prohibits students from engaging in obscene, vulgar, offensively lewd or indecent speech. The administration has the right to review the speech to ensure the student speaker doesn’t plan to engage in those types of speech.
Lott encouraged school board members to read through the five draft policies and offer their thoughts on any language in the policies that may need revision. He said the Northeast Florida Educational Consortium (NEFEC), which provides technical assistance to the district, wrote the five polices.
The five policies relate to “safe and secure schools, religious expression in schools, requirements for original entry, approval of leaves and purchases procurement for schools.”
“These things come to us as a package. They’re pre-packaged from NEFEC. They’re created by a company run by Jerry Copeland. His company creates these sample board policies,” Lott said
Photo by Terry Witt: Assistant Superintendent John Lott discusses the religious expression policy.
School Board of Levy County Regular meeting October 24, 2018
Posted October 26, 2018
