Calif. school board decides church volunteer work now 'community service'

A California school board has settled a lawsuit by amending its policies and accepting a student's community service hours at church.  

Last October, Liberty Counsel filed a lawsuit against the Long Beach School District when it refused to grant credit for more than 70 hours of community service performed by high school student Christopher Rand. As part of his community service project, Rand volunteered at the Long Beach Alliance Church, where he interacted with children and performed other duties.
 
However, the school's policies stated that service in one's religious community did not qualify. But now a settlement has been reached, which awards Rand full credit for the hours.
 
Mat Staver, founder of Liberty Counsel, says the district's settlement sends a clear message. "You must not, you cannot, exclude religious or church organizations as a locale for doing these kinds of community service activities," he states. And when community service is a requirement of graduation, says the attorney, schools cannot limit service to secular venues.

"Discrimination against performing community service for religious organizations violates the First Amendment and offends the rich religious heritage that made this country great," Staver says in a press release.
 
With input from Liberty Counsel, the district has also rewritten its policy to comply the First Amendment. The policy now allows students to complete mandatory community service hours at either secular or religious organizations.

I'm glad they let this student use his community service hours from church.

What infuriates me about this is that community service is required for graduation.  What kind of junk is that?  Public schools are supposed to teach the things that a parent alone cannot, like math and science, etc.  It is not their job to make anyone's child do community service.

algebra said: I think we should ask ourselves, why community service would be a prerequisite of graduation. Sounds like a bunch of secular nonsense to me. Only a group of buracrats could impose such a nonsensical mandate on graduating seniors.

I think it's a good idea, let the students to do real work in real world, and learn from it that they can't learn from textbook.

Kids have plenty of time to live in the so-called real world.  They should be allowed to be kids. 

ConcernedMom said:

Kids have plenty of time to live in the so-called real world.  They should be allowed to be kids. 

we are not talking about elementary, we are talking about high school grad, soon to be college student kids.