School handout urging children to attend a Yule celebration sparks objections from parents
A public-school handout urging young children in Charlottesville, Virginia, to attend a "Pagan ritual" tomorrow to "celebrate Yule" is sparking objections from concerned parents. The promotion flyer encourages students to come to a local church to "explore the traditions of December and their origins, followed by a Pagan ritual to celebrate Yule." One anonymous critic says, "Amazing—government schools ban orthodox Christianity, but allow an openly pagan organization to proselytize six-year-olds!" Albemarle County school board chairwoman Sue Friedman says the flyer was distributed because the school was forced to do so, following a decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That ruling concluded if one community group were allowed to use a flyer-distribution program at a school, then all groups must be given the same access. The group initiating that case objected to a policy that allowed school officials to arbitrarily discriminate against groups they did not like, such as in that instance, a Christian organization. According to Ms. Friedman, the school district adjusted its policy this past fall in light of the ruling. "In order to allow the YMCA to tell you about their soccer league, or the Boy Scouts to tell you about their new troop, we have to allow all nonprofits," she says. "That's why we're seeing this flyer." She cautions, however, that the policy may be revised because of public reaction to the flyer. "We've had some real concerns from parents, who don't understand why we would [distribute this]," she says. Even though the flyer contains a disclaimer, "parents think of things that come home to them as somehow being school-sanctioned." Among the alternative policies the board might consider is to ban all flyers, or simply allow only those created by school and government officials. Ms. Friedman says it was clear the current policy was a "trial run to see how it went." She says the reason for allowing flyers on a wide range of issues was that in the smaller schools, those facilities provide a core for the community, and to eliminate that as a "communication vehicle" could leave children without information about some opportunities they would have. However, the current policy results in more and more such brochures for her schools to distribute.
WorldNetDaily
By Bob Unruh
[Full story]
[Editor’s Note: The Fourth Circuit decision was Child Evangelism Fellowship of Maryland v. Montgomery County Public Schools, summarized below, in which several variations of a school board’s policy on distribution of materials from outside groups were struck down.]
[NSBA School Law pages on Child Evangelism Fellowship of Md. v. Montgomery County Public Schools]