Superintendents discuss religion issues in schools

Three Flathead Valley school district superintendents served as a panel for an Act for America meeting Thursday to discuss religion in schools.

Kalispell Public Schools Superintendent Mark Flatau, Columbia Falls School District Superintendent Steve Bradshaw and Bigfork School District Superintendent Matt Jensen answered the organization’s invitation to answer questions about education, particularly religion in schools. All three men are completing their first year as superintendents of their respective school districts.

Act for America is a “non-profit, non-partisan, grassroots organization devoted to promoting national security and defeating terrorism (www.actforamerica.org),” and has an active local chapter.

Questions explored how public schools handle religion in their curricula as well as in making accommodations for students’ special needs, with a focus on both Islam and the Judeo-Christian tradition.

An example of a question was: “How would you handle a request for a prayer room, halal food, or prayer time during Ramadan, or fasting during Ramadan, or other religious practices of the Islamic faith in our public schools, and how do those compare to accommodations for Judeo-Christian traditions or practices?”

All three superintendents said they haven’t faced such requests in Northwest Montana, and that they are more typically faced with controversy surrounding holidays such as Christmas.

Bradshaw focused in on how the question singled out Islam and Christianity.

“For us to survive as a country, in my mind, we have to be respectful of other cultures and with other cultures come religions,” Bradshaw said. “I don’t believe I would give anything more than I believe the law says that we have to give when it comes to religion.”

Flatau said religious practices such as personal prayer would be difficult to control.

 “We shouldn’t be necessarily attempting to control that in our schools,” Flatau said. “What we do have to be cognizant of is laws and statutes. And we know within public schools we cannot preach; we cannot indoctrinate; we cannot proselytize.”

Flatau pointed out that the opposite is true from the standpoint of students’ rights, citing the Equal Access Act, a federal law requiring public schools to provide equal access for student-initiated and student-led extracurricular clubs at the secondary level to meet outside of class time, whether they have a religious or secular agenda.

Jensen said it is an administrator’s responsibility to protect student’s rights, and he used an example of a student Bible study group.

 “A couple years ago we had a group of third-grade students, very strong in their faith. They wanted to start a Bible study during lunch. Their teacher was not a Christian, but they were Christian,” Jensen said. “They asked that teacher to supervise, which she did, and they were leading their friends to Christ in a third-grade classroom, during lunchtime, that they initiated. They’re in fifth grade now and they still hold the same Bible study at least once a week. That’s their right. It’s not the school’s [study session], but we’re not getting in the way of that.”

Jensen had recently been criticized for allowing a 140-member California Baptist University Choir and Orchestra to perform for fifth- through 12th-graders during school hours in Bigfork High School on May 12. A daily newsletter had been emailed out to parents for five days leading up to the concert stating that the music would have religious content and that attendance was voluntary. During a May 12 board meeting, some parents argued that allowing the performance to take place during school hours put undue pressure on their children to attend. Parents also contended that the emailed newsletter was not adequate notice for parental consent.

Jensen reflected on the response he received from parents.

“Why wouldn’t we take advantage of having this phenomenal first-class group of performers perform in our school?” Jensen asked.

“The knee-jerk reaction schools are faced with I think is, you know, we don’t want to deal with that. We’re just not going to, and we’re not going to have this,” Jensen said.

Administrators were also asked what policies are in place to ensure that there is no subtle or overt promotion or indoctrination of religion and whether or not favoritism of the Islamic faith existed.

Administrators once again agreed that their school districts do not face issues regarding the Islamic faith. Instead, they hear complaints from non-Christians about incorporation of Christian traditions such as Christmas and Easter in the school year.

“You know we celebrate Christmas break and we have a Christmas tree and first grade is probably cutting out angels and [we’re] going on Easter break — that’s what we’re dealing with,” Jensen said.

 Flatau agreed and briefly noted that Kalispell Public Schools had become entangled in a battle on religion in the public square prior to his tenure. In December 2013, the Freedom from Religion Foundation and American Civil Liberties Union of Montana asked Glacier and Flathead high school choirs not to perform in a Christmas concert at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Kalispell. The concert in question, which was voluntary for students to perform in, was billed as a celebration of “the birth of our savior Jesus Christ,” and featured nativity displays.

“We defended it. I was not superintendent then but I can tell you my response would have been similar and that is that on those occasions we were not crossing a line,” Flatau said. “It was their [students’] choice in regard to attendance.”

Bradshaw relayed his own Christmas concert battle and put it in perspective from when he was an administrator in Sitka, Alaska, where there are Jewish, Filipino (sometimes called Pilipino) and native communities.

“I can remember being taken to task about the Christmas concert because there were so many Christian songs, and, to me, I looked at that as, ‘OK, wait a minute. Ninety percent of our community is Christian, so why not have Christian songs in there? At the same time I think we, again, need to understand cultures. It doesn’t hurt for other cultures to be represented,” Bradshaw said. “By the time I left Sitka we not only had Jewish songs at the holiday concert, we had native songs — Alaskan native songs that represented what they believed. We had Pilipino songs, and it was an education for all that attended.”

 “I live in a small town for a reason. We don’t have to fight these issues for the most part. It’s a great place to raise kids,” Bradshaw continued. “At the same time, our kids are going to go out in the world and they need to understand that it’s not like Montana in a lot of places and they need to be respectful of those other cultures.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.