Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990 TAG: 9006260357
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Medium
"We got the main things we wanted," said Sebastian Graber, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which had filed a $675,000 suit against the Shenandoah County School Board.
As part of the settlement approved by U.S. District Judge James Michael Jr., the School Board agreed to pay the plaintiffs an undisclosed amount of money without admitting to wrongdoing.
The lawsuit was filed on behalf of a third-grader at W.W. Robinson Elementary School in Woodstock and the child's mother, both of whom will remain unidentified in accordance with the settlement, Michael said. The suit claimed the School Board violated the pupil's First Amendment rights in allowing certain activities involving the religion classes.
The suit said members of the Weekday Religious Education organization were allowed to park their mobile classrooms on school property and instructors were permitted inside classrooms to recruit pupils. The suit also said public school teachers pressured pupils to sign up for the Bible study classes.
Michael ordered the school board to keep the organization's buses off school property, including "school parking lots, alleys, driveways and streets." The judge said buses can park in front of the school momentarily to pick up and drop off pupils.
Michael said the School Board must ban religion instructors from entering classrooms while pupils are in them, but he said they may briefly enter school offices for "administrative or emergency purposes."
He said School Board employees cannot encourage pupils to participate in the program and instructors cannot escort pupils to and from the Bible classes.
"There were three main elements of the suit, all of which have been resolved to us," Graber said. Those elements, he added, were "no more Bible teachers in the public schools, no more public school teachers commenting about the benefits of religious education and no more religious buses on school parking lots."
R. Craig Wood, a Charlottesville attorney hired by the School Board's insurance company, said Michael's order is already covered by the board's existing policy.
"There is not anything about this order that will require the School Board to change any of its existing policies," he said. "They will simply continue to apply the policy in the same way that they have in the past, and the order does not require them to do otherwise.
"The order specifically states that the School Board does not concede that there was any constitutional violation of any student."
by CNB