South Shore Christian School

Dear Parents of K5,

We will have a pumpkin day on Tuesday, October 30.  Your child may bring a snack to share and pumpkin toy or book or puzzle.  NO Halloween costumes.

Thank You,

Mrs. Sommer

AACS in the Forefront of Preserving Religious Liberty: This week, the Education and Labor Committee considered the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which prohibits discrimination of employees on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation. While there is a religious exemption in the bill, the protections are too narrow and leave serious concerns for many Christian schools.

Last week, Maureen Wiebe, AACS Legislative Director, was interviewed by Focus on the Family Radio about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007 (ENDA). During the interview, Maureen expressed her concern about the negative impact of ENDA on religious schools that are not adequately protected under the religious exemption clause in the bill.

Maureen pointed out that “it would not seem that Christian schools would fall under the religious exemption for ENDA. So ENDA could seriously affect the hiring rights of a religious school.”

• Listen to the Family News in Focus Broadcast from 10-15-07: Click Here
• Read the article from Citizenlink: Click Here

ENDA—Committee Passage: Thursday, the House Education and Labor Committee held a markup of H.R. 3685, The Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 2007. During the markup, Congressman Mark Souder (R-IN) introduced several amendments to the bill, including (1) an amendment that would remove language regarding the perception of a person’s sexual orientation and (2) an amendment to protect state laws that allow businesses to require marriage as a qualification for employment. In addition, he introduced (3) an amendment to prevent employees who are opposed to homosexuality from being discriminated against for expressing their beliefs and for refusing to abide by company policy in regards to homosexuality if this practice runs counter to their religious beliefs.

Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) offered an amendment that eloquently pointed out the problems with the bill’s religious exemption language and presented an amendment that would grant a blanket religious exemption to all religious organizations and educational institutions that have a faith-based mission statement.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) also objected to the bill, offering support for Rep. Hoekstra’s amendment. In her remarks to the committee, she quoted from a letter sent by AACS to the committee staff that stated, “The language of the exemption leaves a substantial loophole for litigants to bring suits against religious schools regarding employment practices. The ambiguity of the language places religious organizations in the same uneasy waters as the original language did and still presents no meaningful protection for religious organizations such as religious schools.”

Congressman Walberg (R-MI) expressed his deep concern that in an effort to prevent homosexuals from being discriminated against, the bill would infringe on the religious freedoms of Americans. Walberg, a graduate of Wheaton College, told the committee that he fears for the freedom of Wheaton and all of the religious school community if ENDA is passed and signed into law.

All of the amendments failed, and the current version of ENDA (H.R. 3785) was passed in committee without amendment 27-21, largely along party lines.

ACTION: Please contact your congressman and ask him/her to vote no on ENDA. Contact information can be obtained at www.house.gov.

Profiles in Failure: The Pacific Research Institute has recently released a book-length study of select public schools in California that are in affluent communities. The book, entitled Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice, addresses the English and math proficiency rates of hundreds of public schools and found 300 public high schools in wealthy neighborhoods whose student bodies failed to reach the fifty percent proficiency threshold.  

These public high schools had good academic reputations; one such school had recently been honored by the California State Department of Education. Authors Lance T. Izumi, Vicki E. Murray, and Rachel S. Chaney presented several theories behind such visible failure in communities in which people move to so their children can have the benefit of receiving an excellent public school education.

The authors gave several reasons for the poor scores, including the following:

• An immense public school bureaucracy that stymies development and makes it nearly impossible to fire failing teachers.
• The lack of competition to gain or keep students.
• The complacency of parents who assume moving to a nice neighborhood guarantees their children a good education.

The authors’ solution to the problems with the California public schools is school choice—as the title of their book suggests. They believe that if school choice exists for all classes, not only the poor, schools will be forced to improve their academic programs for fear they will lose students to private and other public schools. They also believe that school choice will reduce tuition rates in independent private schools because the enrollment demand will be too great for religious schools alone to meet.

Bugs in Bedford and in Your Schools: This week, Ashton Bonds, a 17-year-old student in Bedford, Virginia, died from a staph infection he contracted at his local public high school. He had been hospitalized for more than a week with Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a strain of bacteria that does not respond to the penicillin drug family. He apparently came into contact with the bacteria in his school’s dirty locker room.

In response to the death, the Bedford County School District shut down all 21 of its schools to be thoroughly cleaned before students returned later this week.

According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Bonds’ death was not a rare occurrence. MRSA is widespread, and thousands die each year from complications due to this infection. A recent report published by the American Medical Association contends that MRSA has the potential to exceed AIDS in the number of deaths it causes each year.

MRSA lives on the skin and in the noses of healthy people and can be spread from skin-to-skin contact and through open wounds. Schools are particularly inviting climates for MRSA, especially in gymnasiums and locker rooms where bacteria thrive. Doctors recommend frequent handwashing and general cleanliness. They also suggest that teachers have a large bottle of hand sanitizer in their classrooms and that parents supply their children with personal bottles to keep in their bookbags.

-The Washington Flyer Staff Writer: Jennifer Groover

-The Washington Flyer Editor: Maureen Wiebe