We in Staunton have a choice to make. It is up to us. Shall we choose solar energy ? Twenty one years ago, I was adopted into the Shenandoah family, Wolf Clan, Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (People of the Long House). White people call them Iroquois. We are taught to listen to our elders, learn to respect and act responsibly. Oren Lyons, 93, Wolf Clan, is an Onondaga Chief, and world leader of peace who teaches — The Earth is our Mother. She gives everything we need for life. Imagine a living pine tree clinging to a cliff; getting all it needs for life from the earth. We are like that pine tree. Our Mother Earth provides, but time is running out. We have little time to make changes in order to survive. The economy of nations will be broken by natural disasters. We see more disasters every year: hurricanes, snow melt, coastlines washing into the seas, wild fires, drought, flooding, on and...
At a forum on Tuesday Sept. 13th, Staunton City School Board candidates weighed in on two timely issues. All five of the candidates called for strategies that would increase our students’ safety and security. In addition, three candidates - Fontella Brown-Bundy, Lisa Hatter and John T. Wilson – called for the reintroduction of Weekly Religious Education (WRE). (Stephanie Mason did not support WRE; Kristin Seigel did not support releasing students for WRE during the school day.)
I find it difficult to understand how a candidate could support WRE and also increased security. It seems that WRE would introduce a significant security challenge, a challenge which the school system would be constitutionally unable to meet. This is because of the way that WRE must be organized.
Staunton’s most recent version of WRE, discontinued in 2015, “released” public school students through third grade for religious instruction for an hour each week during the middle of the school day. This program extended through the entire school year. Public school staff escorted students to the school property line at which point WRE staff took them to a nearby church for religious instruction. The public schools took no part in recruitment or curriculum; parents had to “opt in” in order for their children to participate.
These are some of the arrangements necessary in order to satisfy our courts that WRE meets the constitutional requirement that public schools refrain from promoting religious practice. As far as the law is concerned, this strategy washes the public schools’ hands from responsibility for the “released” students, making WRE constitutionally acceptable. This strategy also eliminates the schools’ ability to ensure student welfare and security.
Whatever the law may say, I think that you would agree with me that parents and community would, and should, hold the school system responsible if children were harmed while attending a WRE program. Wouldn’t you hold the school system responsible for harm to your child? After all, the schools would have made that harm possible in the first place by introducing WRE instruction without the capacity to also provide for student security.
When you think about it, this responsibility actually extends further, to each one of us, as citizens who are responsible for electing a school board to oversee our schools. Before choosing school board members that support the reintroduction of WRE, we should first think very carefully about what this means for achieving the public school’s mission, part of which is to ensure student welfare and security.
Dan Stuhlsatz
Staunton
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