Educators and administrators say they are waiting and watching to see what comes of a new state law that explicitly allows students to express their religious views at school events.

Though most Denton-area school districts passed policies within the past month to address where and when students will be allowed to speak, administrators say they are concerned the state law will not protect them from possible lawsuits.

“We’re trying to do scheduling and get programs in place, and we’re all terribly distracted by this,” Argyle Superintendent Jason Ceyanes said in an interview last week.

This year, the Legislature passed the Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, which creates “limited public forums” at student events, with the stated intention of giving students more freedom to express religious views.

The Argyle school board approved the state model policy but altered it to exclude students speaking specifically at football games or in morning announcements.

“The actual Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act does not specify football games; it does not specify morning announcements,” Ceyanes said. “When and where you allow the speech is a local decision.”

Since the board did not identify in the policy any other activities in which the district will have introductory speakers, that decision will be left to administrators, Ceyanes said. And until further notice, district administrators have decided that no students will be allowed to speak at events or activities, regardless of whether the viewpoints of the student are secular or religious.

“If no one is speaking, no one is being discriminated against,” he said.

Ceyanes said there will be some questions as to why students are no longer speaking at certain events, but this is not something that the administrators wanted for the district.

“This is our response to this highly controversial piece of state law,” he said.

Superintendents of local districts that adopted the state’s model policy or policies with slight modifications said that were ultimately not deviating from what they had already allowed. But they said they anticipated further discussion on the issue, nonetheless.

“This law creates a number of problems,” Ceyanes said. “It is my concern, both personally and professionally, that this removes a great deal of discretion for the administration to review what is said before students speak on a microphone.”

District officials, religious leaders and lawyers offer a variety of examples of religious speech that could be used to alienate one group of people.

Ceyanes said that under the law, students could speak of prejudices, extreme religious beliefs and other potentially offensive subjects.

“And that kind of speech is not appropriate in an educational environment,” he said.

But Rep. Myra Crownover, R-Denton, who voted in favor of the act, said she doesn’t think this will be a great burden on school administrators and educators.

“I don’t think this is some huge bar to jump over,” she said. “Teachers handle issues like this every day and are quite capable of handling it. They deal with students expressing inappropriate thoughts. I think religious beliefs should not be an inappropriate thought.”

Crownover agrees that no new rights are being given to students under the law; it only codifies previous rulings from the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I think the attempt was to make it crystal clear that it wasn’t the job of the teacher or principal to suppress any expression of religious thought,” she said.

Dennis Eichelbaum of the Schwartz and Eichelbaum law firm, which represents the Krum school district among others, has helped school districts create their own policies to meet the legislative requirements while trying to avoid potential lawsuits. He said local concerns are different, and every school district should have its say in what meets its specific needs.

“You can’t really use a cookie-cutter policy that will work for Houston and Krum,” he said.

Kelly Coghlan, a Houston constitutional trial lawyer who claims to be the legal author of the Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, rebutted Eichelbaum’s views on the state model policy on his law practice’s Web site, www.christianattorney.com.

On the site, Coghlan states that if a school is challenged for adopting and following the state model policy, it is an attack on the legislation itself, “and a school should clearly enjoy the assistance of the Attorney General in any such suit.”

However, if a school district adopts a different policy, that district will have no assurance of being in compliance with state law and will be on its own to defend against legal challenges, Coghlan states on the site.

But Eichelbaum said that the Attorney General only defends the law itself. School districts will have to pay the damages and attorney fees, he said.

“It’s the damages that everyone has to worry about,” he said.

And lawyers say that there is no guarantee, even with the state model policy, that a school district will not get sued.

“While it does attempt to provide protection for the schools, it also provides a target for people to shoot at,” said Randy Stout, the Denton school district’s legal counsel.

Area administrators said they are following the advice of their districts’ legal counsels, reading Web sites and watching other districts. No one said that they felt their district policy was infallible, and some said they are just hoping to avoid becoming the test case if the law is challenged.

“The preponderance of legal opinion is that the state model policy is more likely to get one sued than the TASB [Texas Association of School Board’s] policy,” Denton School Board President Charles Stafford said. “Complying with the law is important. Keeping safe from legal prosecution is important. Taxpayers in this district have better places to put their money than legal defense funds.”

Stafford said district officials and educators have to be careful not to offend anybody and that is the way policies have been developed over the past several years.

“What I really think is the truth here — the Legislature kind of handed the school districts a hand grenade with the pin pulled,” he said. “It doesn’t matter which way you throw the thing, someone is going to get hurt. There is going to be controversy, and anger and disappointment no matter what we do.”

While previous laws have established students’ rights to host religious clubs on school property, voluntarily say a prayer or express religious viewpoints through class assignments, this law brings into question the freedom students have to proselytize, Stafford said.

“I believe in religious freedom, strongly,” Stafford said. “It’s just that, well, you have to be very careful in how you structure one person’s right to express them. One person’s set of rights can run quickly against someone else’s set of rights.”

Geoffrey Dennis, rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami in Flower Mound, said that while the state is attempting to offer a new solution, the problem remains the same. Because communities are overwhelmingly Christian, and more student speakers are likely to be Christians, there will be controversy as soon as a Hindu, Buddhist or Jewish student voices their religious opinion.

“I think the great moment will come when the first child that is a self-identified Wiccan [a pagan religion] wants to offer a prayer at a football game,” Dennis said. “There is law and there is what people allow to happen, and it’s not the same thing.”

To him, the act seems to be endorsed by a certain segment of the population, with the specific goal of promoting their own, not everyone’s, religious views.

“Inevitably what happens is that people try to use the power of the school system to promote religious ideas and religious beliefs,” he said. “And that’s where we object.”

Dennis said laws already protect students, like those who participate in the Interfaith Club at Lewisville High School.

The club invites people from different religious communities to attend the group’s meetings and explain their faith.

“They learned together,” said Dennis, who has spoken to the club. “That’s a good use of public access. I don’t think this law does anything to enhance that type of dialog.”

SARAH CHACKO can be reached at 940-566-6876. Her e-mail address is schacko@dentonrc.com.

RELIGIOUS VIEWPOINTS

ANTIDISCRIMINATION ACT

The following are highlights from House Bill 3678, also known as the Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act or the Schoolchildren’s Religious Liberties Act, and the state model policy for school districts to follow.

LAW and POLICY: A school district must treat a student’s voluntary expression of a religious viewpoint on a permissible subject in the same manner the district treats a student’s secular voluntary expression.

LAW: School districts must adopt a policy, which must include the establishment of a limited public forum for student speakers at all school events at which a student is to publicly speak.

POLICY: Student speakers will introduce football games; any other athletic events designated by the district; morning announcements; and any additional events designated by the district.

LAW: The policy will require the school district to provide a method, based on neutral criteria, for the selection of student speakers at school events.

POLICY: Only students in the highest two grade levels of the school and who hold one of the following positions of honor based on neutral criteria are eligible to use the limited public forum: student council officers, class officers of the highest grade level in the school, captains of the football team, and other students holding positions of honor as the school district may designate.

POLICY: Certain students, who have attained special positions of honor, such as captains of various sports teams and homecoming kings and queens, will still be allowed to address school audiences as a part of their achieved positions.

POLICY: During graduation ceremonies, only students who are graduating and who hold one of the following neutral criteria positions of honor will be eligible to use the limited public forum: student council officers, class officers, the top here academically ranked graduates, or other student leaders the school district designates.

LAW and POLICY:  Student speakers will not engage in obscene, vulgar, offensively lewd or indecent speech; and must state, in writing, orally or both, that the student’s speech does not reflect the endorsement or position of the district.

LAW and POLICY: Students may express their beliefs about religion in homework, artwork and other written and oral assignments.

LAW and POLICY: Students may organize prayer groups, religious clubs, or other religious gatherings before, during, and after school to the same extent that students are permitted to organize other non-curricular student activities and groups.

SOURCE: Texas Legislature Online, www.capitol.state.tx.us

ON THE WEB

View the entire Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, also referred to as the Schoolchildren’s Religious Liberties Act, at: www.capitol.state.tx.us/tlodocs/80R/billtext/html/HB03678F.htm.