{"id":2421,"date":"2008-04-11T12:02:06","date_gmt":"2008-04-11T17:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2421"},"modified":"2008-04-11T11:00:51","modified_gmt":"2008-04-11T16:00:51","slug":"2421","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2421","title":{"rendered":"The Loophole"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scott Johnson discusses his conversation with a Minnesota Department of Education official that would seem to support the loophole the Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy seems to have found in the state’s laws separating church and government school funding.<\/p>\n

You should read the whole thing for the background<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The conclusion?<\/p>\n

Morgan [the official whom Scott interviewed] commented that so long as prayer is voluntary and not led by school officials, it does not detract from the school’s nonsectarian character. He had no knowledge of after-school instruction, but so long as it was voluntary and the school afforded equal access to other providers, that too would be in keeping with the school’s nonsectarian character. He added that the department was following up on Kersten’s Sunday column with a site visit and a letter to TIZA’s principal inquiring into the issues it raised, as it had done in 2004 following Tammy Oseid’s Pioneer Press article.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Equal access to other providers?”<\/p>\n

Like if I offered to start a Presbyterian youth group for the school’s after-hours activities?<\/p>\n

Johnson concludes:<\/p>\n

Muslim activists have found a workable seam in the purported separation of church and state in Minnesota<\/strong>. One does not need to engage in much speculation to foresee the day when Minnesota’s burgeoning Muslim population will be educated in separate charter schools like TIZA at taxpayers’ expense, where they will receive religious instruction courtesy of the likes of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota.<\/p>\n

What is an opponent of the phenomenon represented by TIZA to do? If TIZA’s arrangement passes muster with state authorities, an opponent is left with two options. One must either await judicial intervention at the behest of some party with standing to bring a lawsuit raising the obvious First Amendment issues, or one must work for the demise of charter schools.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The demise of charter schools is not an option; indeed, for many of us parents in the city, charter schools have been an unqualified Godsend.<\/p>\n

So maybe the third option is to take reciprocal advantage of the loophole; the city’s other <\/em>charter schools that have adopted the structure, if not the dogma, of religious education should also take the opportunity to offer after-school activities to their kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Johnson discusses his conversation with a Minnesota Department of Education official that would seem to support the loophole the Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy seems to have found in the state’s laws separating church and government school funding. You should read the whole thing for the background. The conclusion? Morgan [the official whom Scott interviewed] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-faiths-and-their-followers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}