By Bob Allen
A group of Texas pastors who support public education warned that a proposal to divert public funds to private schools would create a “parallel private system of education” supported by taxpayers in a brief filed Sept. 1 in the Supreme Court of Texas.
Pastors for Texas Children, an organization started by longtime Baptist minister Charles Foster Johnson in 2013, said the 1,200 faith leaders and 500 churches it represents “could not disagree more” with an earlier brief filed by the U.S. Pastor Council suggesting that an “efficient system” of public education must include vouchers and other means of redirecting government money to religious schools.
“The last thing our fine public schools need is more dollars drained away from them, and the last thing our fine private schools need is the government intervention and oversight that will inevitably and necessarily follow the public money they receive,” the brief argues.
The U.S. Pastor Council — with Texas leadership including pastors Ed Young of Second Baptist Church in Houston, Robert Jeffress of First Baptist Church in Dallas and Kie Bowman of Hyde Park Baptist Church in Austin — argued in a brief Aug. 18 that denying education funds to church-run private schools is a form of “religious bigotry.”
Pastors for Texas Children, however, claims the exclusion of religious schools from the public education system is not a violation of religious liberty.
“The current public school system does not force anyone to attend a public school or obtain a secular education,” the brief states. “Private religious education is available to anyone who cherishes it enough to bear the cost. We prefer the system where those who love and cherish a faith have to bear the cost of that faith. That is the way faith flourishes.”
Both briefs attempt to influence justices trying to decide whether the state’s current system for funding public education meets constitutional requirements. A four-year-old lawsuit brought by nearly two-thirds of the state’s school districts claims the state has not given them enough money to achieve higher standards that lawmakers have set for the 5 million students in Texas public schools.
Pastors for Texas Children says the current system of funding Texas public schools is inadequate to meet the needs of all students, but “the creation of a second, parallel private system of education, while neglecting the public system” would violate a provision in the state constitution requiring the legislature “to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”
Contrary to claims by the U.S. Pastor Council, the brief says programs that divert education funds to private religious schools “actually impede student achievement and harm the overall education system.”
Such schools are “not held to the same standards of accountability as public schools,” it says, and if public education standards were applied to them it would “alter the current parochial school system” by removing their right to set their own curricula.
“Faith is strong and alive in America because of the freedom of religion and the separation of church and state,” the brief argues. “In the places where this is not true, the church is an empty shell. Depending on the state for funds is a death sentence for free religion and vibrant faith.”
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