Edmonton mother asks for school without religion

EDMONTON — When Morinville mom Donna Hunter sent her five-year-old daughter to kindergarten orientation, she was surprised to learn that the public schools in her town were actually Catholic schools with a heavy emphasis on God and religion in the curriculum.

“When she came back and I got my package, I realized everything was Catholic,” said Hunter, who has lived in the town of about 8,000 since 1999. “That’s not what I understood a public school to be.”

The Greater St. Albert Catholic Regional Division, which also has schools in St. Albert and Legal, operates all four of the schools in Morinville — two elementary, one junior high and one high school — with a “Christ-centred learning” environment.

It’s the public school board because when it was established nearly 150 years ago, the majority of people in the area were Catholic and is now the only area in the province where the Catholic board operates the public school system.

Hunter and a few other parents have met with school board officials to request a non-religious education be available for their children, but sasy they have not found the responses encouraging. Hunter made a presentation at a board meeting last week to make an official request they provide a secular education option, and is expecting a response by the end of January. Board superintendent David Keohane said Hunter’s request is an “extraordinary” one.

But Hunter said her request is consistent with her Charter rights under section 2a, which guarantees “freedom of conscience and religion.”

According to Dr. Frank Peters, a professor of education governance at the University of Alberta, the board has the responsibility to provide Hunter and other parents with a secular option.

“They have to find an arrangement that accommodates the people who articulate to them that they need a general curriculum in their school that is not permeated by religion,” he said.

Because there are no secular school options in the town, students are allowed to opt out of religion classes and take a health and wellness class instead.

“That opportunity has always been within the School Act,” Keohane said. “The counter to that reality is we have a far higher percentage of parents who choose for their children to take religious studies than we have Catholic students within the school.”

But parents say that alternative doesn’t address their concerns because the rest of the day’s lessons are infused with Catholicism.

“The religion class is half an hour every day, and that is the only time my children are not discussing religion,” said Marjorie Kirsop, whose son, 7, and daughter, 5, are enrolled in Notre Dame Elementary School in Morinville. “But the rest of the day they are exposed to it.”

Despite being the first parent to bring this issue before the school board formally, Hunter said she has received the quiet support of at least 30 families in the town, but added many are afraid of speaking up out of fear of being ostracized.

Minister of Education Dave Hancock said now that the issue has been raised, the board has to provide Hunter with an option that is both feasible and would satisfy the rights of parents and students involved.

“It’s incumbent on (the board) to provide a broad education and to provide an education which allows exclusion from religious instruction.”

He pointed to the proposed framework for the new Education Act, expected to be introduced in the spring legislative session, which could allow the minister to reclassify a separate school board as public, or vice versa, when their designations “no longer accurately reflect the minority faith population.”

via Morinville mother asks for school without religion.

Related Articles

• Oregon School Says Christmas Holiday Tree Must be Decorated With Muslim and Jewish Symbols – DailyTidings.com
• The students won in Louisiana today – Louisiana Coalition for Science
• “God blocked the bullet” says Florida School Superintendent – Examiner.com
• The Indiana student who stopped school prayer – FFRF
• Lightning strike kills 7 at nursery school party in South Africa – CNN.com