LINK

Jonesville Community Schools is ending a Bible distribution program at Williams Elementary School after a parent raised concerns, the superintendent said.

“That’s my plan at this point, unless it’s explained to me otherwise that that’s all right,” said Superintendent Mike Potts. “I don’t think there’s any need for us to continue that practice.”

The Hillsdale County district plans to continue another program at the elementary school that allows students to leave the building during school hours for an off-site Bible study program, Potts said.

Williams parent Kristen Finnegan, who contacted Potts to question the Bible distribution and to a lesser extent the Bible study release program, said she is happy about the response from school officials.

“The Bible handout program, I would have fought that to the end,” said Finnegan, who described her family is being secular but not atheist. “That needed to stop.”

Rana Elmir, a spokeswoman from the Michigan American Civil Liberties Union, said that a federal court has ruled that schools allowing adults to distribute Bibles violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment’s requirement against government establishment of religion. But courts have held that releasing students from school for Bible study classes is constitutional as long as schools meet certain requirements, Elmir said.

“I think the bottom line here is students should not feel that they’re outsiders in their own schools or community because other students are of a different faith and are being treated differently, or perhaps better,” Elmir said.

Finnegan said students previously had told her fifth-grade daughter “that the devil was going to get her” because she did not leave for the Bible study program, she said.

Finnegan — who emphasized that she has otherwise been happy with the Jonesville district — complained to Potts after last week’s Bible distribution by Gideons, the organization that provides Bibles to hotels and motels and other organizations and individuals.

“They didn’t give (students) a choice,” she said. “They just handed them out.”

Potts said Gideons has come into Williams for an undetermined number of years to hand out Bibles to students. He said this was the first complaint.

Elmir said it is permissible for students to hand out Bibles or other religious literature to schoolmates, but not for an outside group or school officials to do so.

The Bible distribution was more problematic than the release program because it was done without parental consent, Potts said. Parents choose whether their children go to the Bible study at a local Baptist church, he said.

Officials from the church, Friendship Baptist Church, could not be reached for comment.

An outside organization transports participating students to the program, Potts said. Students in the Reading district, where Potts also is superintendent, participate in a similar Bible release program, he said.

At Williams, about 75 percent of students in the lower grades and 50 percent in the upper grades participate, Potts said. About 30 percent of students at Reading’s Reynolds Elementary School participate, he said.

Elmir said it would be illegal if the schools transported the students to the Bible study or devoted other school resources to the program.