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07 Dec 2013

Portfolio Artifact #6
Sabina Smith
EDU 210
Professor Dr. Celia Isbell

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Kindergarten teacher Karen White recently became a Jehovahs Witness and, because of
that, she informed her parents and students that she could no longer lead or participate in certain
activities. This meant that she could no longer decorate the classroom for some holidays or plan
for gift exchanges during the Christmas season. Because her religion does not celebrate
birthdays, she also could not sing Happy Birthday, and neither could she recite the Pledge of
Allegiance. Parents protested and the school principal, Bill Ward, recommended her dismissal
based on her ineffectively meeting the needs of her students.
In the case of Bannon v School District of Palm Beach County (2004), Shelda
Harris Bannon, on behalf of her daughter Sharah Harris, alleged that Appellees, School District
of Palm Beach County and Principal Ed Harris, violated Sharahs First Amendment rights by
compelling her to remove religious words and symbols from murals painted for a school
beautification project. The district court granted summary judgment for Appellees. The court
based the decision on the lemon test and concluded (1) Appellees never created a public forum,
(2) the murals were school-sponsored speech, and (3) Appellees response was reasonably related
to legitimate pedagogical objectives. In this case, the principal did not violate a students first
amendment right to free speech. I think this case has a lot of similarities with our case. Here
Sharah wrote religious stuff on the walls of the school, where in our case the teacher is not going
to celebrate any religious holidays. I think looking at this case we can think that Karen is doing
the right thing by not going to display any holiday decoration and would win in court.
In Stone v. Graham (1980), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that
a Kentucky statute was unconstitutional and in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment, because it lacked a nonreligious, legislative purpose. The statute requires the
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posting of a copy of the Ten Commandments on the wall of each public classroom in the state.
While the copies of the Ten Commandments were purchased with private funding, the court
ruled that because they were being placed in public classrooms they were in violation of the First
Amendment. This case is similar to ours in that the teacher is not willing to celebrate any
holidays or to display decorations. If we look at this case, we can say that she is right because if
she did display some decorations that could be against some other beliefs and then school could
be violation.
Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United
States ruled that Pennsylvania's Nonpublic Elementary and Secondary Education Act
(represented through David Kurtzman), which allowed the state Superintendent of Public
Instruction to reimburse nonpublic schools (most of which were Catholic) for the salaries of
teachers who taught secular material in these nonpublic schools, secular textbooks and secular
instructional materials, violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. This
decision also upheld a decision of the First Circuit, which had struck down the Rhode Island
Salary Supplement Act providing state funds to supplement salaries at nonpublic elementary
schools by 15%. The act stipulated that "eligible teachers must teach only courses offered in the
public schools, using only materials used in the public schools, and must agree not to teach
courses in religion." The court found that the parochial school system was "an integral part of the
religious mission of the Catholic Church" and held that the Act fostered "excessive
entanglement" between government and religion, thus violating the Establishment Clause. Both
statutes are unconstitutional under the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment, as the
cumulative impact of the entire relationship arising under the statutes involves excessive
entanglement between government and religion. This case is also similar to ours in that here

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teachers could not be compensated for teaching religious courses. In a way, Karen is trying to
make her students be a part of her religion by not participating in their holidays or by letting
them to display decorations.
Bishop v. Aronov (1991) is a case in which Phillip A. Bishop, an exercise
physiology professor at the University of Alabama, sued the college on free speech and academic
freedom grounds, when it instructed him not to teach "intelligent design theory" in an
extracurricular class and not to lecture on "evidences of God in Human Physiology". The District
Court for the Northern District of Alabama found in favor of Bishop but the University appealed
and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that the classroom, during
instructional time, was not an open forum, and that the University had a right to set the
curriculum. This case is like our case in that the teacher was teaching that God exists and
showing his students only his point of view. Karen is doing the same type of thing by showing
her students that holidays are bad and by not celebrating with them and due to what religion she
is.
Basing my opinion on all those cases shown before, I think that Karen has a chance to
keep her job through appeal because she has a right to be a part of religion and to not to break
their rules. But I also think that the principal was right asking her to leave. I think that it is ok for
her to be a Jehovahs Witness of course, but she cant deprave little kids the privileges of
celebrating Christmas and believing in Santa Clause. I also think that kids have a right to
celebrate their birthday at school as well. Concluding this whole case, if the decision was mine, I
would ask Karen one more time to rethink her practices in the classroom and if she still decided
that she cant participate in any of these things, I would rule in a favor of principal.

References:
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Bannon v School District of Palm Beach County (Oct 12, 2004) IN THE UNITED
STATES COURT OF APPEALS , Retrieve Dec 7, 2013 from
http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200313011.pdf

Bishop v. Aronov (1991) Wikipedia, Retrieved Dec 7, 2013, from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bishop_v._Aronov

Lemon v. Kurtzman, (1971), Wikipedia, Retrieved Dec 7, 2013, from

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemon_v._Kurtzman
Stone v. Graham case (1980), Wikipedia, Retrieved Dec 7, 2013, from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_v._Graham

Underwood, J. and Webb, L.D. (2006). School Law for Teachers concepts and
applications (page 120-130). New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc