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Prepared Speech
The Potential of Faith-Based Charter Schools
By Lawrence D. Weinberg, Esq., Ed.D.
Charter schools are public schools that face greater accountability and have greater autonomy than traditional public schools. The school receives a charter to operate from a state-approved entity; it then receives a combination of local, state, and federal funding. Forty states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws (each is different). There are more than 4,000 charter schools across the country serving more than a million students.
The Establishment Clause requirement of separating church and state applies to charter schools just as it does to other public schools. However, the chartering process offers faith-based schools important opportunities because of the increased flexibility enjoyed by charter school operators.
The bottom line distinction between what faith-based charter schools can and cannot do is this: faith-based charter schools can accommodate their students’ religious beliefs; the Constitution, however, prevents faith-based organizations from creating charter schools that endorse religious beliefs.
Because the Establishment Clause draws a line that is far from clear, any list of permissible and non-permissible activities of faith-based charter schools is necessarily imperfect. Accordingly, these issues need to be discussed in broad strokes, but the fundamental lessons provide valuable guidance. It is important to bear in mind that such programs will always be determined to be constitutional or unconstitutional based on their particulars. For example, the Supreme Court has held that one display of a crèche may be constitutional, while another may violate the First Amendment.
Chartering does not permit a faith-based, private school to merely close its doors in the summer and then reopen unchanged the following fall as a public charter school. However, there are a wide variety of activities that the Constitution permits a faith-based organization to pursue through the charter school model.
What follows is a list of issues central to running a school, whether a faith-based school would have to change its operations were it to convert into a public charter school, and if so, how.
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Issue
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Resolution
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Discussion
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Staffing
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Changes
required
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A charter
school cannot have religious criteria for staff; the non-discrimination requirements
of Title VII apply to charters since they are public schools. So for example,
a faith-based charter could not terminate a teacher for behavior that runs
counter to the faith inspiring the school; private faith-based schools are
permitted to do so.
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Teacher
certification
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Depends on the
state
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Some states
require all teachers at charter schools to be certified (e.g., California,
Virginia), while some do not (e.g., Arizona, Washington, DC). Some states
require that some percentage of charter school teachers be certified (e.g.,
Illinois, South Carolina, New York). Massachusetts requires teachers at
charters to be either certified or pass the state teaching test. Indiana
permits alternate route certification.
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Religious
icons
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Generally not
permitted
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Although
religious icons are not generally permitted at a charter school, it might be
possible for a charter school to rent a facility with existing religious
icons.
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Prayer
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Changes required
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Prayer must be
voluntary and student-initiated. Schools may provide students with a space to
pray before or after school; however, teachers may not participate in
prayers.
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School
ownership, operations, and management
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Depends on the
state
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According to
the Becket Fund for
Religious Liberty, thirty-seven states have provisions in their constitutions
(commonly called Blaine Amendments) that prohibit state monies from funding
religious schools. In those states a secular foundation would have to operate
the school. Currently, Rev. Michel Faulkner is suing to permit the New
Horizon Church to operate a charter school in Harlem challenging New York’s
Blaine Amendment.
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Uniforms
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Permitted
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Charter
schools may have dress codes or school uniforms.
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Dietary restrictions
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Permitted
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Charter
schools may provide kosher, halal, or other religiously required food to
their students. While a charter school could probably maintain an entirely
kosher kitchen, it probably could not ban all non-kosher food from the
cafeteria.
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Holiday
arrangements
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Permitted
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Charter
schools may close for religious holidays as an accommodation to their
students.
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Religious
admissions requirements
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Prohibited
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Charter
schools cannot have any religious admissions requirements or preferences for students
of a particular faith.
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Curriculum
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Depends on the
state
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State
curriculum requirements and their applicability to charter schools vary
widely.
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Religion
courses
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Changes
required
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No religious
course may endorse the religion being taught. The course could endorse
morality generally or culture. However, a charter school may rent space to a
different entity to teach religious courses after school ends so long as
students are not required to take such courses.
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Board
membership
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Open
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Clergy may sit
on the boards of charter schools, but there can be no requirement that clergy
sit on such boards or that board members profess a particular faith.
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Religious
identification
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Prohibited
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Charter
schools cannot identify with any faith.
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Scheduling
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Permitted
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A charter
school can arrange its schedule to enable students to attend religious
activities after school.
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Faith-based charter schools are more than a theory; several are in operation today. It is, however, difficult to discuss their operations for two reasons. First, some charter schools are only marginally faith-based. For example, a charter school may have formed because parents had religious objections to their local public school’s reading curriculum. So the new “faith-based” charter school could be 99 percent the same as the neighborhood public school but without the religiously objectionable readings.
The second reason is because some charter schools that may appear to be faith-based from the outside are not viewed by their founders as faith-based but as cultural- or language-based. However, faith-based does not mean unconstitutional. A faith-based charter school is a charter school that is quite simply in some way based on faith.
The following charter schools are faith-based to varying degrees:
- Adam Abdulle Academy, Rochester, Minnesota: was founded to meet the needs of Somali immigrants—who are primarily Muslim—and includes an Arabic language program
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Ben Gamla Charter School, Hollywood, Florida: includes a bilingual and bicultural Hebrew curriculum and serves kosher food
- Hellenic Classical Charter School, New York, New York: includes the study of classical Greek and Latin; the school shares facilities with a Greek Orthodox school (a similar school operates in Florida)
- Hmong Academy, St. Paul, Minnesota: curriculum is enriched and informed by Hmong culture
- New Millennium Academy, Minneapolis, Minnesota: focus on Hmong culture
- Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy, Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota: bilingual Arabic program and cultural lessons focused on traditions, histories, civilizations and accomplishments of Africa, Asia and the Middle East (Muslim areas)
- Winans Academy of the Performing Arts, Detroit, Michigan: school creed begins, “I am created in the image of a super-intelligent God…”
Catholic schools in Washington, DC, Rochester, NY, Marysville, CA, and Denver, CO are considering or are in the process of converting to charter status, as is the Ross County Christian Academy of Chillicothe, OH. Religious leaders operate charter schools all across the country. There is no way to track how many religious schools have closed their doors only to have a charter school open in the same building, with many of the same teachers and students. For example, in Brazoria County, Texas, the West Columbia Charter School opened in the same building where the Columbia Christian School operated. Minnesota has numerous schools based on cultures that may have religious elements, including Latino, Native American, East African, and Chinese communities.
The critical point for religious leaders considering opening a charter school is whether they will be able to fulfill their desired mission through a school that may accommodate religion but not endorse it. Each leader will have a different answer to this question. And while I have addressed in broad strokes some of the issues that religious leaders may have, these lessons could be applied in a number of ways at the school level and therefore come to rest on different sides of the constitutional line. However, the fact that a number of charter schools in operation today are connected to a faith demonstrates that chartering offers a promising and realistic opportunity for leaders of faith-based schools who are considering ways of maintaining the viability of their institution.
Transcript
Read the transcript of the panel on public policy options, including Dr. Weinberg's speech.
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