ACLU questions 'religious education'

LIHU‘E, Kaua‘i — Each Wednesday afternoon for the past three or four decades, dozens of Hanalei Elementary School students have left classmates behind and gone to church for religious education.

And within an hour, they have returned to be released from school with their classmates and to climb onto buses to head home.

It is a process the American Civil Liberties Union says is probably an unconstitutional violation of the separation of church and state. The organization is reviewing the religious education issue and "still has lingering concerns" despite at least one change in the way Hanalei School has handled it, said ACLU Executive Director Vanessa Chong.

But state education officials say religious education is permitted as part of a longstanding state policy. It is available to schools throughout Hawai‘i, but apparently used by only a few.

"We had it at ‘Ele‘ele School when I was there, but it was dropped for lack of participation. For the students who continued, it was changed to an after-school program," said Daniel Hamada, Kaua‘i District superintendent for the state Department of Education.

"There is nothing to prevent a community from doing this. It is both in Board (of Education) policy and in statute," said Greg Knudsen, public information spokesman for the Department of Education.

The religious education program at Hanalei was brought to the attention of the ACLU by a parent, the organization said. ACLU Legal Director Brent White wrote to the DOE suggesting that religious education during school hours is improper.

"Hanalei School is using the state’s compulsory education system to aid religious groups in spreading their faith," White said.

Deputy Attorney General Russell Suzuki said that based on his review of the Hanalei situation, only one part of the process was flawed: Teachers were handing out release forms that children took home to get parental signatures allowing them to participate in religious education.

"We put a stop to that. It is up to the churches to distribute such forms," he said. The process of allowing children to leave school for religious education is both proper and has long standing in Hawai‘i, he said.

"I remember when I was going to school at Leilehua (on O‘ahu), the Catholic students would go to catechism," Suzuki said.

Hanalei School Principal Barbara Baker said about 90 of the elementary school's roughly 260 students leave campus at 12:30 p.m. each Wednesday. Some go down the street by car to St. Williams Catholic Church and some walk next door to Waioli Hui‘ia Church, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

They return at 1:15 p.m. and are released from school with the other students. The children who remain at school continue to receive instruction. The students who take religious education are responsible for catching up.

Religious education was in place when he arrived at the school in the 1970s and dates back at least to the 1960s, said retired Hanalei School Principal Nick Beck.

"It's a religious right guaranteed under the First Amendment," Beck said.

While only two churches now participate, others could, and in the past, others have.

"At one time, the Mormon Church had a program, too, but now they don’t," Baker said.

The ACLU’s Chong said religious education during school hours is a fairly clear violation of the separation of church and state.

"These are young students who are impressionable. Is there coercion or peer pressure at work?

White said the test established by the federal courts for whether a constitutional church-state issue exists in a public school is the 1971 "Lemon Test," from the case Lemon vs. Kurtzman.

Under Lemon, a court must ask whether a government’s action has a religious purpose, whether its primary effect advances or endorses religion, and whether it fosters excessive entanglement between government and religion.

Religious education in Hawai‘i public schools appears to be constitutionally questionable on all three criteria, White said.

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