Saving Religious Schools a Risk for Obama?

Why not save Catholic schools with government funds? Schools are schools, and their primary purpose is to educate this nation’s children to be productive, responsible and law-abiding citizens. To this end, President Obama’s faith-based program may be a godsend to closing Catholic educational institutions. That is what Anthony Stevens-Arroyo, Professor Emeritus of Puerto Rican and Latino Studies at Brooklyn College, argues on his Washington Post “On Faith” Feb. 8th post. To some committed separationists—and in fact to your average American tax-payer—the idea of resuscitating Catholic schools suffering from lack of financial support with tax dollars would not only be absurd, it would be downright unconstitutional, a clear establishment of religion case and an easy fail on the Lemon entanglement litmus test. Yet rescuing Catholic schools may well be on the agenda of President Obama’s much-debated faith-based initiative.

Back in July 2008, then presidential candidate Barak Obama gave a speech in Zanesville, Ohio where he announced his plan to form a “Council on Faith-Based and Community Partnerships” if elected president. Fast-forward a few months and President Obama seems to be on track to delivering on his promise. On Feb. 5^th, 2009, President Obama signed an executive order to officially establish a White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The Office includes a 25-member Advisory Council of both religious and secular leaders. Three of the Office’s four main objectives is domestically-focused, encompassing poverty-reduction, supporting women and children, reducing the need for abortions, increasing employment and promoting responsible fatherhood. Strengthening communities and achieving all these listed goals undoubtedly involves improving education. From this point precisely, arises the possibility of President Obama’s faith-based program helping Catholic schools and with it a whole jumble of constitutional and legal questions marks.

Before someone shouts out the First Amendment with fiery disbelief, let me elaborate. President Obama is not proposing that Congress should convert to Catholicism. His faith-based policies, however, would allow for Catholic schools, and other religious schools, to convert to charter schools. Charter schools are privately-run, publicly-funded schools that are not formally part of the public school districts and that have more flexibility than traditional public schools in setting teacher salaries and their curricula. Charter schools are required, however, to fulfill government-mandated educational standards and must be non-sectarian. Therefore, if a Catholic school agrees to become a charter school, it can receive government funding like any other charter school, but only for its non-religious instruction or in ways that would not be channeling public funds to directly support religious teaching. Students would have to relocate during the school day in order to take religious courses, for example, as established by Zorach v. Clausen (1952), and as has been the case with a Catholic school turned charter in Queens, NY.

Such arrangements for support of religious schools would not be a great departure from historical precedent. In 1997, the Supreme Court approved the use of federal tax funds in Agostini v. Felton to send public school teachers into parochial schools to provide remedial teaching to “at risk” students during the school day. In Mitchell et al. v. Helms (2000), the Court again approved using federal funds to aid religious schools, this time granting money for computers and library books. The famous Zelman v. Simmons-Harris case in 2002 allowed for government-issued educational vouchers to be used for student tuition even if students used the vouchers to attend private religious schools, and in fact, an overwhelming majority of them did just that.

So are faith-based charter school arrangements a good idea? Stevens-Arroyo got a lot of heat for responding to this question with a “yes.” Yet, Catholic schools and other private religious schools undeniably serve an important role in community development. They often fill a substantial gap that poorly-functioning public schools leave behind, particularly in neglected inner cities. The educational voucher program that sparked the fire of the Zelman case is proof enough that public schools alone are not getting the job done when it comes to educating under-privileged American students. Perhaps government support of private schools, including religious schools, can help give more students a better basic education, which would in turn help the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships achieve its goals of poverty-reduction and social rehabilitation.

A word of prudence must follow, however. Even if giving private religious schools a push for the sake of the greater public good is a smart move, President Obama and his Advisory Council for the faith-based Office will have to proceed with caution. Critics of the idea can quickly argue that funds would be better spent trying to improve public schools, instead of risking getting stuck in legal webs over religious schools. Whatever the case, I do not doubt that every move the Council makes—related to schools or otherwise— will be under the wide-eyed scrutiny of policy-makers, lawyers and citizens alike. If someone spots excessive entanglement of church and state, they will be sure to blow the whistle loud and clear.