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Friday, January 6
CONTENTS
1. NY Mayor Balances Hasidic Ritual Against Fears for Babies' Health
2. Abortion Rights in Latin America
3. Religious schools see little impact from FSC voucher ruling
4. 'Shake it out for Jesus': Churches co-opt hip-hop
5. A TV pilot with Jesus as co-pilot
6. Let state live up to its mandates for schools
1. Mayor Balances Hasidic Ritual Against Fears for Babies' Health
By Jim Rutenberg and Andy Newman
The New York Times
Friday, January 6, 2006
With three days to go before Election Day, ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, held what was by far the largest rally of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's campaign. With searchlights bouncing across the Brooklyn sky and klezmer music blaring from speakers hoisted on cranes, thousands of Hasidic Jews, in black hats or head scarves, cheered the beaming mayor from rooftops and blocks upon blocks of bleachers.
When one of the most revered Orthodox leaders, Rabbi David Niederman, addressed the throngs, he praised the mayor for his push to create more affordable housing, his takeover of the public schools and his support for the constitutional separation of church and state.
For many in the crowd, the last reference was code for the administration's decision to hold off from taking action against an ancient form of ritualistic circumcision practiced by some Hasidic rabbis that had been linked to three cases of neonatal herpes in late 2004, one of them fatal.
But now, with the election over, the city's Health Department, while not banning the procedure, is angering those Hasidic leaders just the same by pushing a public health campaign against the rite, in which the practitioner, or mohel, sucks the blood from the circumcision wound to clean it. The department took the action after linking the rite to additional cases of herpes in infants, one of whom suffered brain damage as a result.
Some in the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox communities say the city is infringing upon their religious rights. They go so far as to accuse Mr. Bloomberg of reneging on what they say they took as an election-year assurance that the administration would leave the matter to rabbinical authorities. But others outside those communities had been harshly critical of the administration, saying that it failed to take adequate action against a practice that has been endangering the lives of infants.
The dispute, which had the mayor trying to calm rabbinical leaders at Gracie Mansion yesterday in what his aides called a frank exchange, has put Mr. Bloomberg in the rare position of balancing a key constituency against the policies of one of his most trusted commissioners. And it occurs against the backdrop of the roiling ethnic politics of New York, with Orthodox leaders having threatened to disrupt the mayor's inauguration last Sunday by wearing yellow stars like the ones Jews were forced to wear in Nazi Germany.
The Bloomberg administration denies that politics have had anything to do with its decisions, and administration officials say they made no pre-election promises regarding the rite.
"The mayor has a fundamental commitment to public health," said Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the commissioner of health and mental hygiene. "That didn't change when it looked like the smoking ban was going to cost him re-election, and it didn't change in this case."
Still, Dr. Frieden said, there were plenty of other factors to make an issue affecting a small percentage of city Jews as thorny as the smoking ban that the mayor pushed in 2002, which affected millions. In this case, Dr. Frieden said, the administration is trying to balance religious rights against the health of infants by educating parents about the dangers of the procedure.
"There's no question this is one of the most delicate issues I've ever had to deal with," he said.
Dr. Frieden and other officials said they were forced to act in recent weeks after discovering the two new cases of herpes infection.
But some Hasidic leaders see political motivations at work.
"The whole thing seems to be that Bloomberg before the election just told the health commissioner, 'Listen, cool it down, and wait till after the election,' " said Isac Weinberger, a leader in the Satmar Hasidic sect in Williamsburg. "It was a flip-flop. He fooled the community."
The health department began focusing on the risks of the procedure, known as metzitzah b'peh, after it learned that one boy in Staten Island and twins in Brooklyn, circumcised by the same mohel in 2003 and 2004, contracted Type-1 herpes.
That form of herpes can prove deadly for infants, who, health officials argue, are of particular risk during metzitzah b'peh. Most non-Orthodox Jews have abandoned the practice, as have even many Orthodox Jews.
But Orthodox rabbis who support the procedure say 2,000 to 4,000 such circumcisions are still performed each year in the city. They insist the procedure is safe and does not transmit herpes, which can be contracted by infants from their mothers, during childbirth. For some Jews the procedure is crucial to raising boys in a Jewish tradition.
"We chose America because of religious freedom. That's why we are here," Rabbi Niederman said this week in an interview at City Hall. "There is no compromise on this issue, because we know it is safe."
The issue erupted in August, when the health department prepared an order prohibiting the mohel whom the department had linked to the three cases of herpes, Rabbi Yitzchok Fischer, from performing further circumcisions. After members of the Central Rabbinical Congress promised to keep him from performing circumcisions and to investigate the cases involving him, the health department stopped drafting the order.
The mayor and his health commissioner said they would continue to study the matter but that they would not ban the practice, with Mr. Frieden saying that such a ban could be seen as interfering with religious freedom, and that a ban would be unenforceable anyway.
And, in a message heard loud and clear by rabbinical leaders, Mr. Bloomberg said on his radio program, "It is not the government's business to tell people how to practice their religion," although he also promised, "We're going to do a study, and make sure that everyone is safe."
Some outside the Hasidic communities criticized the mayor's statement, seeing it as a decided change of tack for an administration that had banned smoking and taken an aggressive stand on public health issues in general.
"He has made it legally impossible to have a cigarette and a cocktail at the same time, anywhere in the city," fumed the writer Christopher Hitchens on Slate in August. "I'll trade him his stupid prohibitionist ban if he states clearly that it is the government's business to protect children from religious fanatics."
An editorial last week in a local Yiddish newspaper, Der Blatt, cited the mayor's position then as a catalyst for the huge campaign rally for him on Nov. 5 in Williamsburg.
"What has been promised to us prior to the recent elections - and this was the only request we made - was that the subject of metzitzah b'peh should be completely untouched by the city department of health," the editorial said. "This and only this was the reason why thousands of Orthodox Jews registered themselves to vote, undersigned a petition to the mayor, came out in droves, men, women and children, to an unprecedented rally."
Rabbi Niederman said this week that he believed that Orthodox Jews supported Mr. Bloomberg because of many of his policies, not just his position on the rite, and said it would be unfair to question his political motives. Nonetheless, he said, "Before the election, we were very proud that the mayor did the right thing."
He said he was "astonished" and "shocked" by the city's more recent actions.
In December, Dr. Frieden wrote an "open letter" to Jews recommending against the practice and highlighting an alternative in which a sterile tube is used. He has also announced a plan to hand out literature about the practice's dangers to postnatal mothers. And a new health department alert has reminded hospitals of a mandate to report what Dr. Frieden described as "all unusual manifestations of disease" in newborns.
Dr. Frieden said his hand was forced when his department discovered the new cases of neonatal herpes - one coming in the spring, the other, in which the infant suffered brain damage, coming in October - and conclusively determined that they and the earlier cases were caused by metzitzah b'peh.
He emphasized that the city had no plans to take more aggressive action against the procedure. "I really have bought into the worldview that says for some part of the community metzitzah b'peh is integral to circumcision, and circumcision is integral to being Jewish," he said.
One public health specialist, Dr. William M. McCormack, director of the infectious disease program at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, said Dr. Frieden's move "was probably the least that he could have done with a clear conscience."
But members of the Central Rabbinical Congress said that Dr. Frieden was in effect going over rabbis' heads by talking directly to their congregations in an attempt to persuade them to abandon a centuries old religious practice.
An open letter responding to Dr. Frieden, signed by "a member of the Jewish community" but approved by Hasidic leaders, said, "The citizens of the observant Jewish community live by the our own Director of Surveillance, with mandates that have guided and preserved our families for thousands of years."
Rabbi Niederman, who attended last night's meeting at Gracie Mansion, said the mayor calmed the rabbis by calling for a meeting of doctors who agree with the city and doctors who agree with the rabbis at which they would find "common ground."
"Maybe it needs a Camp David, you know what I mean, for three days, and nobody leave the room until an agreement is reached," Rabbi Niederman said.
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2. Abortion Rights in Latin America
New York Times editorial
Friday, January 6, 2006
For proof that criminalizing abortion doesn't reduce abortion rates and only endangers the lives of women, consider Latin America. In most of the region, abortions are a crime, but the abortion rate is far higher than in Western Europe or the United States. Colombia - where abortion is illegal even if a woman's life is in danger - averages more than one abortion per woman over all of her fertile years. In Peru, the average is nearly two abortions per woman over the course of her reproductive years.
In a region where there is little sex education and social taboos keep unmarried women from seeking contraception, criminalizing abortion has not made it rare, only dangerous. Rich women can go to private doctors. The rest rely on quacks or amateurs or do it themselves. Up to 5,000 women die each year from abortions in Latin America, and hundreds of thousands more are hospitalized.
Abortion is legal on demand in the region only in Cuba, and a few other countries permit it for extreme circumstances, mostly when the mother's life is at risk, the fetus will not live or the pregnancy is the result of rape. Even when pregnancies do qualify for legal abortions, women are often denied them because anti-abortion local medical officials and priests intervene, the requirements are unnecessarily stringent, or women do not want to incur the public shame of reporting rape.
But Latin Americans are beginning to look at abortion as an issue of maternal mortality, not just maternal morality. Where they have been conducted, polls show that Latin Americans support the right to abortion under some circumstances. Decriminalization, at least in part, is being seriously discussed in Colombia, Brazil, Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina, and perhaps will be on the agenda after the presidential election in July in Mexico.
International pressure is helping. In November, the United Nations Human Rights Committee decided that Peru had violated a woman's rights when a hospital denied an abortion to a 17-year-old carrying a severely malformed fetus, who died shortly after birth. United Nations conferences on women also have forced governments to track and publish their progress on expanding women's rights. This has emboldened women's groups and led to the creation of government offices on women's issues, which have helped the push for abortion rights.
Latin American women, who are increasing their participation in the work force and in politics, have also become more vocal. Their voice would be much louder were it not for the Bush administration's global gag rule, which bans any family planning group that gets American money from speaking about abortions, or even criticizing unsafe illegal abortions. This has silenced such respected and influential groups as Profamilia in Colombia. Anti-abortion lawmakers in Washington can look at Latin America as a place where the global gag rule has worked exactly as they had hoped. All Americans can look at Latin America to see unnecessary deaths and injuries from unsafe abortions.
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3. Religious schools see little impact now
By Jeff Brumley
The Florida Times-Union
Friday, January 6, 2006
Some religious educators expect Thursday's ruling by the Florida Supreme Court to have little or no immediate impact on their schools.
But some of them are concerned the ruling could eventually undermine other scholarship programs that benefit their students.
Larry Keough, associate for education for the Florida Catholic Conference , said 128 Catholic school students are using the Opportunity Scholarships.
That's a small fraction of the approximately 100,000 students that attend Catholic schools in the state, Keough said.
In Northeast Florida, Patricia Tierney, superintendent of education for the Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine, predicted little impact on the 10,500 students who attend 29 diocesan schools there.
Tierney said she couldn't immediately say how many students participate in the Opportunity Scholarship program.
Dennis Robinson, president of the Florida League of Christian Schools, said the impact would be minimal on the organization's 204 member schools.
"Hardly anybody uses it in the Christian school world because of the strings attached," Robinson said.
Those strings include a prohibition against requiring religious instruction and a rule that participating schools accept any child with a voucher, Robinson said.
"Most of us screen anyone who walks into our schools, " he said.
Despite the low number of participating students, the state Supreme Court ruling "is a concern if it becomes a precedent that might adversely affect the other scholarship programs," Keough said.
One group that praised the decision was Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
"Now the state Legislature can devote its attention to improving public education rather than subsidizing religious and other private schools," said the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based group.
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4. 'Shake it out for Jesus': Churches co-opt hip-hop
By Nate Herpich
The Christian Science Monitor
Friday, January 6, 2006
NEW YORK - Rapper Kurtis Blow stands in the front of the church wearing a black do-rag, scratching records old-school, accompanied by a drummer in a hooded sweatshirt and a keyboardist in a New York Jets jersey. The congregation is on its feet, dancing.
"Shake it out," says the Rev. Stephen Pogue of the Greater Hood Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Harlem. "Shake it out for Jesus. On your feet for 90 seconds."
Hip-Hop Church has been electrifying Greater Hood on Thursday nights for the past year. Pastor Pogue himself was a fan of Blow some years back, when the musician helped rap emerge on the national scene. Since then, however, Pogue has become dismayed by what he sees as industry moguls pushing artists into ever-edgier realms. Indeed, rap is often known for glorifying violence and using misogynistic lyrics. Yet now, Pogue's church is offering a cleaner version of rap, even putting it in a spiritual dimension.
"I understand that there's a lot of negative in hip-hop today," Pogue says. "But Hip-Hop Church highlights the positive sides of hip-hop, what hip-hop can do."
This marriage between rap and a Harlem church on 146th Street is one of many efforts to improve the genre's image. In recent years several innovative organizations, including the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, have formed, both to help rap's image and offer community programs. The 2004 elections even prompted a National Hip-Hop Political Convention in Newark, N.J.
But Greater Hood, more than just interested in changing hip-hop's reputation, has discovered a unique means of reaching a new generation of congregants. And what's happening at Greater Hood is part of a slowly developing national phenomenon. The Lawndale Community Church in Chicago, for instance, offers its own weekly rap-inspired service called "Tha House" - and one of its pastors, Phil Jackson, has co-written a book entitled "The Hip-Hop Church," due out at the end of this month.
The music has also emanated from Christian churches in cities not typically known for hip-hop, such as Tampa, Fla. Even Redeemer Lutheran Church in Minneapolis, a congregation evenly divided between whites and blacks, has a weekly hip-hop service led by Christian rapper David Scherer, aka Agape.
Says Redeemer's pastor, Kelly Chatman: "Young people are not coming to church to hear classical music like they did when I was young.... Hip-hop is simply the vernacular of a culture that the church should be reaching out to."
3 Shades of Faith speaks that language at Greater Hood, with songs like "Flipside" and freestyle sessions straight a cappella. The group is made up of three Harlem teens: Tykym Stallings, whose stage name is Malakai; Lamar Haney, known as Noah; and Michael Sims, who goes by Mic. 3 Shades writes all their own lyrics, and Pogue checks them out before they're put to a beat in the church. Stallings says some congregants are starting to know some of the songs. On this night at least, a couple of kids in the front row follow along, lip-syncing some lyrics. "My inspiration in writing comes from things I see that God has given me," says Sims.
According to Stallings, the group's members share similar stories growing up together in the church, dealing with obstacles in school and on the streets. Stallings says he struggled with grades in school, and the pull of gangs. He's now a freshman at Nyack College in upstate New York. Haney first came to Greater Hood for a funeral, after a friend had been shot. Pogue remembers that Haney showed up the next Sunday, and the next, and the next. A high school dropout at the time, Haney went back to school. He, too, is now in college.
"We are trying to teach kids that they don't have to be a statistic," says Pogue. "They don't have to be a part of the jail system or undereducated. So many people perish because of a lack of knowledge." Pogue says hip-hop has played a major role in the education of these three teens.
It is these types of stories that make Blow feel as if he and the genre he helped to mold are doing something worthwhile. He has seen hip-hop blow up in popularity, now 25 years since his certified gold record "The Breaks" was released, and three decades after he burst onto the scene as a DJ and break dancer named Kool DJ Kurt. He's watched hip-hop spread globally, becoming what he calls "the primary culture of modern society." He tells of Palestinian rappers whose song was No. 1 on Israeli radio. (In 2004 Tamer Nafar and his group Dam released a single called "Born Here" with lyrics in both Arabic and Hebrew.) He is impressed by a new generation of rappers that features faster rhymes and more creative, diverse beats.
Yet, while Blow aims to remain positive about the state of hip-hop today, his own protégés, like Sims, are more realistic. In fact, Sims says he is unable to name a single positive contemporary rapper whom he respects. Violence has been glorified since groups like NWA gave birth to the gangsta rap movement, and money and sex are still the major marketers of hip-hop. Sims says that the violence and cursing in rap have gotten out of hand, and even rappers with positive songs like Kanye West resort to the negative to sell records. He cites West's new release "Gold Digger." (In last year's Grammy-winning "Jesus Walks," West raps, "...they said that you could rap about anything but Jesus, that means sex, lies, videotape, but if I talk about God, my record won't get played.")
The daunting question remains: Can a religious hip-hop movement really make enough of a dent in the market to become a serious alternative for kids buying records? So called "positive rappers" like Mos Def and Common are successful, yet recent entries on Billboard's Top 10 rap albums include 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," Chamillionaire's "The Sound of Revenge," Pitbull's "Money Is Still a Major Issue," and Young Jeezy's "Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101."
Blow acknowledges that something is missing. He says he and other "positive artists" must work to repaint the image of the art form, which he says the entertainment industry has tarnished, and pray that a new movement takes hold.
"What is needed in hip-hop is spirituality," he says. "I believe hip-hop can save the church, and the church can save hip-hop." He believes that songs like West's "Jesus Walks," which was a critical and commercial success, have given the church some momentum to build on. His old friend Joseph Simmons, formerly known as "the son of Kurtis Blow" and later half of Run DMC, is now a minister with a popular reality show on MTV.
Mr. Chatman of Redeemer in Minneapolis agrees with Blow: More important than merely asking if hip-hop can work, he says, is making the decision to accept hip-hop as a viable means of spreading the gospel. To him, hip-hop presents an opportunity to educate and empower a new population of young people. On a typical Sunday morning at Redeemer, about 70 people show up to hear the Christian word. Yet 300 attend the church's hip-hop services.
"Martin Luther did theology in taverns," Chatman says. "To what extent are we willing to go to reach young people today?"
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5. A TV pilot with Jesus as co-pilot
NBC's controversial new series puts an Episcopal priest at the head of a hard-living family - and the Savior himself in a supporting role.
By Clayton Collins
The Christian Science Monitor
Friday, January 6, 2006
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - "Sex. Drugs. Stolen money and martinis." The marketing for an NBC drama that premières Friday at 9 p.m. EST suggests standard prime-time fare. Not quite. This show also comes with a religious motif, though its creators maintain that it's not the latest shot in a culture war.
"The Book of Daniel" - already generating buzz beyond what you might find around a network's typical mid-season pickup - is something more than an edgier "Joan of Arcadia." "Daniel" drives at the increasingly complex and personal nature of spirituality, even within the structure of an established church. And it takes an approach that's more "The Sopranos" than "7th Heaven."
Aidan Quinn plays Daniel Webster, an Episcopal priest at the head of a family whose dinner-table conversation is seldom light. A daughter has sold marijuana, Daniel abuses Vicodin, and his hard-drinking wife, played by Susanna Thompson, exudes an emotional frigidity attributed to the loss of a child.
Webster uses his faith to navigate issues ranging from one son's homosexuality to his own clashes with Church hierarchy. Oh, and he has a mentor: a personal Jesus, the incarnation of an internal dialogue. Played by Garret Dillahunt, the character appears - in a car's passenger seat, for example - as a bearded man with period clothing but very contemporary speech patterns and a wry irreverence. "Hey," he tells a defensive Daniel in one late-episode scene that takes place outside a bishop's house, "I'm not the one out here casing the joint."
The conservative American Family Association has already launched a campaign to persuade NBC affiliates not to pick up the program, which it calls anti-Christian. A pair of stations in Arkansas and Indiana announced this week that they would not air the show.
And the show's creator fully expects more scrutiny.
"Any time you do anything that has to do with religion you're going to have some controversy," says Jack Kenny, who explains that he wrote the script on spec with the aim of using a church backdrop to explore a contemporary family's interactions - its faith and values - amid all the inherent pressure and politics.
For Quinn, an early pick to play Jesus in the controversial 1988 film "The Last Temptation of Christ" (Willem Dafoe won the role), depicting the Savior as a genial, free-thinking pragmatist makes sense.
"Jesus was continually getting in trouble with the high priests because he was breaking the rules," says Quinn, sitting inside a stately white Colonial here in New York's Westchester County during a shoot on a gusty November day. "I think real spiritual teachers [within all religions] transcend all of this hideous dogma, which is about holding onto power."
Outside, low-flying commuter planes have production workers pulling off headsets in bemused exasperation. A rain shower has scattered the child extras again.
Mr. Kenny, a veteran TV writer, would like to see the show held up against the likes of HBO's acclaimed "Six Feet Under."
"My goal is to do a solid show about people who love and care about each other and aren't perfect," he says. "There are a lot of doctor shows and lawyer shows. There aren't a lot that show a family dealing with real problems that don't get solved in 40 minutes."
NBC, a network hungry for hits, positions "Daniel" - which one critic called the network's "Hail Mary pass" - as a potential ratings-lifter.
"This one will appeal to those who are interested in quality drama, period," says Vivi Zigler, the network's executive vice president of current programming. Acting, writing, production quality, and the universality of the issues it presents will hold viewers, she says. " 'The West Wing' happens to be about the White House and politics," says Ms. Zigler. "But I don't know that it's only people who care about politics who come to that show."
Still, pop-culture offerings have mined religion of late with great economic success. Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" generated more than $370 million, and the screen adaptation of C.S. Lewis's allegorical classic, "The Chronicles of Narnia," had blown past $209 million by New Year's Eve. The bestselling book, "The Da Vinci Code," acquired an unwavering fan base, as have Tim LaHaye's "Left Behind" novels and subsequent movies.
NBC itself got a ratings bump in April from the six-part "Revelations," which also reached for broad appeal.
"Regardless of whether you were a devout Christian or an atheist, you found something in 'Revelations' to react to," says Zigler of the series about the end times.
That "Daniel" appears neither to pile-drive a particular take on Christianity - other than a liberal attitude on such issues as tolerance of gays and artificial life support - nor to gratuitously tweak Christian believers, could quell criticism beyond the inevitable differences over how well it is executed. And having "Jesus" as a recurring character?
"Extremists on either side will probably have a hard time," says Ms. Thompson, Quinn's costar. "But there's a big middle."
Theologians are understandably reluctant to comment on programming they have not yet seen. A Jesus figure as a casual conversationalist could alienate non-Christians and some "nominal" Christians, says James Wall, a senior contributing editor at Christian Century magazine who writes widely on religion and popular culture.
"The only way I'm going to be accepting of religious conversation with God in popular media is if I am led to feel that person is very humble about what he or she thinks he or she heard, and passes it along with a great amount of caution," says Mr. Wall.
Wall has a personal benchmark for appropriate handling of the relationship between man and Deity: Robert Duvall's character in "The Apostle." The humanly flawed Duvall character took an "old friends" approach, speaking to God with familiarity, frankness, and humility.
That could also describe Daniel Webster. "He's trying his best to evolve into a spiritual being," says Quinn of his character, "and having varying degrees of success at that. He wants to be a better man." Talking to Jesus helps.
"To me, this kind of intimate, heartfelt relationship with Jesus is the normal fruit of a serious life of prayer," says Brendan Manning, a writer and former Roman Catholic priest who has generated controversy for advocating syncretism of Christianity with other religions. "I don't think it requires talking to [Jesus] as Daniel does in the car," he says. "But it certainly involves more than the recitation of rote prayers."
For Mr. Manning, the real division in Christian churches today - an Episcopal schism is just one example - is not between liberal and conservative but "between the aware and the unaware," with awareness among "authentic" Christians not only of God's unconditional love but also of the need for mutual acceptance.
On the set here in Westchester, the clouds have blown over. Cast and crew emerge from the video village of equipment pushed under a tarp. Flory Suarez, an executive producer, steps off the set and looks out across the lawn as cast members prepare for another take.
"Faith isn't something that TV covers," he says. "And more than anything, [Quinn's] is a character of faith."
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6. Let state live up to its mandates for schools
Daytona Beach News Journal editorial
Friday, January 6, 2006
In a strong, unambiguous 5-2 ruling, the Florida Supreme Court said Wednesday that the state would be abrogating its constitutional responsibilities by turning over public education to private schools through a statewide voucher system called Opportunity Scholarship.
"The court got it right," said Jon Mills, former dean of the University of Florida and former state House speaker who helped author the constitution's provisions on education that voters adopted in 1998. The state, he said, has still not lived up to its duties.
Indeed, the state has been moving away from those responsibilities in recent years. As the state relies more on voucher-type systems, in which schools are not held to the standards of public schools, the governor and legislators can duck accountability: If funding is inadequate, blame the private schools. If private schools fail, don't blame the state.
The potentially far-reaching opinion, written by Chief Justice Barbara Pariente, said the Opportunity Scholarship program violates constitutional mandates "by devoting the state's resources to the education of children within our state through means other than a system of free public schools." The court added that the constitution "does not authorize additional equivalent alternatives."
Opportunity Scholarship payments, the court said, "reduce funding for the public education system, (and the program) by its very nature undermines the system of 'high quality' free public schools that are the sole authorized means of fulfilling the constitutional mandate to provide for the education of all children residing in Florida."
The state also has no mechanism to make private schools uniform with public schools.
Because the voucher program violated the constitutional education mandate, the court said there was no need to address the "no aid" provision, which prohibits public funding of sectarian institutions, such as religious schools.
The court's opinion directly affects only the Opportunity Scholarship, which provides vouchers to students who choose to leave "failing public schools" as measured by the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. But, it sets a precedent that could undermine two other programs -- the McKay Scholarship program, a voucher system for children with disabilities, and the Corporate Tax Credit, which provides tax credits to businesses that contribute private-school scholarships for children from low-income families.
The constitution's clear intent, the ruling said, is "that public funds be used to support the public school system, not to support a duplicative, competitive private system."
Amen.
Parental choice, as the court said, is not at issue here. Nor is this about the quality of public schools vs. the quality of private schools. The question is whether the state has lived up to its responsibilities. And clearly it has not.
The governor and Legislature should take this ruling seriously and redirect the course toward truly improving public schools -- especially failing schools -- rather than trying to eliminate them.
THE COURT CASE
The Florida Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the state, through its Opportunity Scholarship program, is fostering plural, nonuniform systems of education in direct violation of the constitutional mandate for a uniform system of free public schools.
The court said that because it violates that part of the constitution, there was no need to address the question of whether it also violates the "no aid" provision, which bars use of public funds for religious institutions.
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ACLU Legislative Counsel
Tallahassee, Florida
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