Conway Public Schools has started allowing youth pastors back onto campuses after several weeks of temporarily banning them from school visits, said superintendent Greg Murry in email Friday.
“I appreciate our communities’ patience with us as we worked through this sometimes tedious process,” Murry wrote. “We certainly want to make sure that we are constitutionally correct while honoring the values of this great community.”
Murry halted visits to students during lunchtime after Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit group that advocates for separation of church and state nationwide, sent a letter in October telling the school to stop allowing youth ministers access to children. In January, Murry met with ministers to say they could not visit schoolchildren during lunchtime while the school sorted out its legal standing.
The school district hired Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm that seeks to defend religious liberty in the public arena, and the group found last month the district has visitation policies that are “neutral” for both religious and non-religious visitors.
During the last school board meeting, the board approved recommended procedures to further cement the neutrality of the district’s policy and paved the way to reopen schools for visitors. At least one parent said in February that she would wait to see if the policy would prevent pastors from preaching to other children besides those they are supposedly visiting. She said pastors previously had been allowed to walk around and proselytize.
On Tuesday, Murry released a guideline list for visitors that says, in part, “Visitors will refrain from proselytizing while on campus.”
Visitors must present photo identification and be screened, and they are not allowed to distribute literature while on campus, according to the guidelines. Visitors belonging to groups or organizations must meet with the principal or his designee.
Murry also released a new consent form for grades kindergarten through seventh.
“As they get their paperwork together, they will be allowed to come back on campus,” Murry said.
(Staff writer Scarlet Sims can be reached by email at scarlet.sims@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1246. To comment on this and other stories in the Log Cabin, log on to www.thecabin.net. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
Comments (28)
Add commentRegular, non-parental vistors
should also be background checked at the cost of the visitor(s) before being allowed on campus.
Some schools currently have a system for background ...
...checks that works by scanning the driver's license and cross checking for any outstanding warrants, charges, etc that would flag the visitor as someone who should not have contact with children. I don't think it would be practical to charge some individuals for such a search and not others - that would probably create more hassle for school office staff.
On a related note, if this statement:
"..She said pastors previously had been allowed to walk around and proselytize."
is accurate, that does paint a different image than the one previously conveyed in similar conversations.
I may have missed this in an article, but in all of this has anyone -specifically- described the events that led to the raising of this issue?
Previous mentions of proselytizing
http://thecabin.net/news/local/2013-01-17/religious-visitors-barred-scho...
Top of the page and another near the bottom. Bookmarks, fascinating asset.
"On a related note, if this
"On a related note, if this statement:
"..She said pastors previously had been allowed to walk around and proselytize."
is accurate, that does paint a different image than the one previously conveyed in similar conversations."
Amen...and once again our local religious zealots demonstrate one of their main truisms: If you're lying for Jesus, that's OK.
Clearly our school administrators were enablers to the proselytizing else it wouldn't have occurred...(and it certainly wasn't them that brought this stuff to the public's attention). So I wonder what the odds are that they'll be vigilant about making sure these pastors adhere to the specifics of this agreement.
LOL krg2, great minds...
LOL
krg2, great minds...
You might want to check that statement
You might want to check that statement about scanning drivers license. Unless they are part of the criminal justice system they are not privy to that information.
NTB, the scan of the driver's license....
...is required for a visitor to enter the school for schools which use the system in question. However, I do not know how reliable the system is in connecting people to outstanding warrants and/or crimes of violence, crimes involving children, etc. using a driver's license number (which may or may not be a person's SSN....)
I suspect the vendor must have a relationship with the appropriate entities in the criminal justice system to make this work but we are not told the details of the relationship.
Sign-up sheet
Where does one sign up to be a youth minister? I would really like to talk to Kindergarten through 7th grade at lunch, parent approved, of course.
"The school district hired
"The school district hired Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm that seeks to defend religious liberty in the public arena, and the group found last month the district has visitation policies that are “neutral” for both religious and non-religious visitors."
Tell me this is your joke of the day...PLEASE!
Waiting for the punchline...the Jason Rapert public policy.
"..She said pastors
"..She said pastors previously had been allowed to walk around and proselytize."
"is accurate, that does paint a different image than the one previously conveyed in similar conversations."
My guess -- they were lying for Jesus, again!