In North Carolina’s most recent budget, passed by the legislature in July, state lawmakers created two new statutes which the Wake County Public School System (WCPSS), along with districts around the state, must now scramble to implement.
The first, GS 115C-407.45, requires schools to allow students an hour of excused absence per week for off-campus religious instruction from a private entity. The second, GS 115C-98.5, requires school boards to create a “community media advisory committee” to investigate challenges to books and other instructional materials on the basis of their content and age appropriateness. Challenges can come from any Wake County resident.
At its Tuesday night meeting, the Wake County school board advanced new policies corresponding to the two statutes through the district’s approval process, even though a majority of the members think they are bad policies for WCPSS students and staff. Doing so “shows a good-faith effort that we are seeking to be compliant with this new, misguided legislation,” board member Lynn Edmonds explained.
The policies have so far only passed a “first reading” by the school board and will need to pass a “second reading” at a future board meeting in order to be adopted.
The statutes don’t specify a firm deadline for the district to adopt the new policies, but the school board’s attorney, Rod Malone, advised that the board should probably move them forward “quickly.”
“I think this is something for which the deadline may be now-ish,” he said.
Excused absences for religious instruction
The first new policy on excused absences for religious instruction says that students need permission from a parent or guardian to participate, will not receive academic credit for their participation, and are responsible for making up any missed schoolwork. Off-campus religious instruction is not permitted during state testing.
Community members who came to the board meeting to speak in opposition to the policy, as well as board member Cheryl Caulfield, who supports it, both named LifeWise Academy as one of the private organizations promoting the legislation.
LifeWise, according to its website, wants to “help your public school student grow in character with Bible education during school hours.” A promotional video shows LifeWise volunteers herding a group of Ohio elementary schoolers onto a red bus, then dropping them off at a community center for a “40-minute, Bible-based character education class.”
“They’re going to learn about things like obedience and respect and truthfulness,” explains a peppy volunteer in a red LifeWise quarter-zip.
By law, public schools cannot offer religious instruction, though they can teach about religion from a secular, academic point of view. However, LifeWise has seized on a 1952 Supreme Court decision that allows religious instruction during school hours as long as it is off-site, privately funded, and parent-permitted.
The organization reports having 533 active chapters around the country, plus 4,406 more “in process.” On its website, LifeWise says it has a chapter “launching soon” at Willow Springs Elementary in southern Wake County.
Caulfield, a Republican whose term is expiring this year and who is not seeking re-election, was the only board member who spoke substantively in favor of the religious instruction policy. She said she talked with LifeWise’s state director and liked what she heard. According to Caulfield, LifeWise works with school principals on scheduling and provides valuable mentorship to students. She said she believes LifeWise can proactively keep students from turning to drugs, gangs, or “struggling on the street to find a place they belong.”
Her colleagues balked at this. “I certainly hope they paid you for that infomercial,” said board member Sam Hershey.
Board member Chris Heagarty pointed out that the state statute (and therefore the board policy) does not define “religious instruction.”
“You could get requests from Satanists, from fringe religions that call themselves religions, from groups that many people would consider to be cults,” he said.
Malone, the lawyer, advised the members that they cannot legally write a narrower definition of “religious instruction” into their policy than what the state statute specifies.
Board member Jennifer Job warned that the policy will open the door to comparison and exclusion, recalling her own experience as a Jewish student at a predominantly-Christian elementary school.
“I was excluded from playing at recess because I supposedly hated God because I didn’t go to church,” Job said. “I can already foresee the bullying and the ostracizing of students of differing faiths … once we make religious instruction a district-approved part of the day.”
(Job was the lone “no” vote when it came time to move both policies through the approval process. They both passed 8-1.)
Edmonds noted that the excused absences could add up to 40 hours of lost instruction time in a school year.
“You’re going to tell the school districts of North Carolina, including Wake County, that we are charged with teaching and learning during the school day, and yet you’re going to require us to let students miss up to 40 hours?” she asked, exasperated. “Those two notions are in conflict with each other.”
The board asked district staff to bring them recommendations on whether they can require background checks for private religious instructors as they do for teachers and school volunteers. Staff said they will give an answer when the policy comes back to the board for a second reading.
Book challenges
The second policy the school board considered Tuesday night concerns challenges to books and other instructional materials.
By law, the district must create a committee of principals, teachers, school librarians, and parents who will “investigate and evaluate challenges to supplementary and instructional materials.” Any parent, teacher, or Wake County resident can challenge the use of a book or other piece of media if they consider it to be “obscene,” “inappropriate to the age, maturity, or grade level of the students,” or “not aligned with the standard course of study.”
Upon receiving the challenge, the advisory committee must hold a hearing within two weeks. After that, they have two more weeks to make their recommendation to the school board, who gets the final say on whether the material should be “retained or removed.”
The school board had many questions about how they are supposed to implement this policy. It does not specify what happens if 50 people challenge the same book, or if one person submits 50 challenges at once. Nor is there guidance in the state statute about whether retention/removal decisions apply district-wide, school-wide, or to a particular grade level. Terms like “obscene” and “inappropriate” are not defined, leaving the committee and the school board wide latitude to accept or reject challenges.
“We were given a bad piece of legislation that has a lot of holes and a lot of undefined terms,” Heagarty said.
Board members were also concerned that committee meetings would eat up valuable teacher and staff time. District staff confirmed that the committee will be able to meet virtually, most likely every two weeks, to hear challenges in batches. Meetings will be live-streamed for the public.
“To layer this work and these committees on top of their already overburdened schedules is such a grotesque misuse of our educators,” Edmonds said.
Caulfield again took the contrarian view, saying she supported limiting students’ access to “sexual, inappropriate materials.”
“Parents are seeing these books and going, ‘Why are we putting this in there?’” Caulfield said. “As a mom and as a board member, I just need to speak up and advocate for them because I know I would not want my children to read this. Although if they had questions, I would definitely have those answers at home. I just wouldn’t want them to go to a library and read these things before we had those conversations at home.”
As most of the school board members voted, grudgingly, to advance both policies in compliance with the law, they seemed deflated. Board member Christina Gordon said she found it “painfully ironic” that the legislature wants schools to narrow the definition of instructional materials on the one hand, but send students off to receive private, unsupervised instruction on the other.
Both policies are arguably rooted in an idea that public schools are somehow failing their students—by not providing religious instruction, or by exposing students to “inappropriate” ideas. Heagarty defended WCPSS, pointing out that students’ academic proficiency scores have risen since the pandemic.
“Our graduates are some of the most highly-recruited and sought-after college applicants in the nation,” he said. “These students are receiving millions of dollars in scholarships and financial aid based on their academic success and proficiency, and the character of the graduates we are producing.”
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