Religious issue splits school board

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This article was published 05/01/2011 (5422 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A familiar religious hot potato within Winnipeg School Division is threatening once again to send temperatures soaring.

A minority of trustees has failed in a bid to lobby the province to change legislation that forces school boards to allow religious exercises and religious instruction to be conducted in secular public schools.

But trustee Mike Babinsky claims three trustees — board chairwoman Suzanne Hrynyk, Kristine Barr, and Joyce Bateman — are using every means available to thwart and delay parents who want their kids to take part in religion at school.

Every few years, WSD chooses up sides over provisions in the Public Schools Act which allow parents of at least 25 children to petition for religious exercises or instruction in the school. If parents meet the criteria, the act says, school boards must approve the religious activities within the school for children of those parents.

Only the Winnipeg School Division has had public problems with the legislation and practice.

WSD’s policy and program committee recently recommended the division ask Education Minister Nancy Allan to change “shall” to “may” in the act, giving trustees the option of saying no.

But a majority of the board defeated that proposal, and also defeated a proposal to ask the province to shift the decision on religious activities from trustees to administrators.

“A majority of the board is in agreement with the current practice,” Hrynyk said Tuesday, refusing to discuss her personal views.

Unlike previous occasions in 2000 and 2006, no situation at schools arose to trigger the controversy, she said. She said some trustees simply wondered, “Is there a better way of doing this?”

There were allegations in the past that members of the Child Evangelism Fellowship were proselytizing on school grounds with parents and even with children, trying to get families to sign the petitions and register for the activities. Some parents at La Verendrye School in Fort Rouge objected a decade ago after the school allowed a mother to use the school to send home letters encouraging families to enrol their kids in religious activities.

The national office of Child Evangelism Fellowship on Henderson Highway referred questions Tuesday to provincial staff, who were not available.

Babinsky said when parents bring in 25 signatures, most divisions pass a bylaw in one night to approve religious exercises or instruction, getting unanimous consent for three readings at once.

Neither Babinsky nor Hrynyk could recall any mainstream church, or any religious organization other than the Child Evangelism Fellowship, being involved in requesting religious instruction within a division school.

Babinsky said staff go through the signatures with a fine-toothed comb, and if there’s any problem, back goes the petition, sometimes to be redone from scratch.

Meanwhile, it takes only one trustee to abstain or vote in opposition, to have only one reading at each board meeting, which is what happens, Babinsky said. “Before you know it, it’s January” by the time the religious activities begin.

Babinsky, who believes the province should handle the approvals if trustees have no choice in the matter, said the problem goes back to some religious groups opposing anti-homophobia education in 1999. “They’re painting all religious people with the same brush,” he said.

“That’s so not the case,” Bateman said Tuesday. “Nobody’s holding a grudge on anything. The reality is, we don’t have a voice — we’re wasting board time on this.”

Hrynyk insisted the examination of petitions and the one reading of the bylaw per meeting are the way the board has always handled religious requests.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

What the law says

The Manitoba government amended the Public Schools Act in 1897 to allow for mandatory religious instruction in schools.

Parents could ask that their children be excused from taking part.

In 1992, the Court of Queen’s Bench ruled saying The Lord’s Prayer in schools was an infringement on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, striking down several sections of the Public Schools Act. Since then, the act has allowed parents to petition for their children to take part. Religious exercises and religious instruction are generally held before school and during lunch hour.

They are to be conducted by a clergyman, priest, rabbi, or other spiritual leader, or by a representative — including a teacher — of parents whom the school board recognizes as constituting a religious group.

The petition requires signatures of parents and guardians of at least 10 students in a school of one or two classrooms, and parents and guardians of 25 children in a school of three or more classrooms. Only children whose parents sign the petition will be allowed to take part.

There are two distinct religious activities allowed.

Religious exercises are activities such as saying The Lord’s Prayer, to be conducted before the start of the school day, in a designated area of the school away from the classroom, among willing participants. Teachers cannot be compelled to supervise or take part.

Religious instruction usually involves activities such as Bible studies, almost invariably conducted in Winnipeg over the lunch hour by the Child Evangelism Fellowship of Manitoba, a national organization whose website says repeatedly its purpose is to evangelize and “disciple” children.

 

— Sources: Manitoba Education Department, Winnipeg School Division