School Sues State for Banning Bible Use as Textbook
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
BOISE, Idaho — A public charter school is suing Idaho officials, saying the state illegally barred use of the Bible as an instructional text.
The Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund filed suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Boise
on behalf of Nampa Classical Academy in Idaho.
The charter school is scheduled to open Sept. 8 and had planned to use the Bible as a primary source of teaching material, but not to teach religion.
The Idaho Public Charter School Commission said last month that the school couldn't use the Bible because the state constitution
"expressly" limits use of religious texts.
The Alliance Defense Fund says the school has a statutory right to choose its own curriculum and the Bible shouldn't be singled out for censorship.
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A BIG problem that the Commission made in its decision was to single out Nampa Classical Academy and then threatened to revoke their charter if it was used anyway which is a big Constitutional no-no. The Commission would still have been wrong if it banned it from all public charter schools because the standard public schools could still use it causing Constitutional issues as well. the Commission stated that NCA cannot use ANY religious document in its classrooms. I don't know how someone studies Western Civilization without a discussion of the Bible, the Reformation, etc.; or Eastern Civilization without the Koran or Torah.
Besides that the US Supreme Court has ruled that the Bible can be used in public schools as a text as long as it was not used for a religious purpose which the school was not intending to do.
One point of interest is that NCA has a 16 or so page policy regarding religious discussion and use of religious materials in the classroom that takes care of any issues regarding the use of the Bible or other religious text in a religious manner.
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