Senators Reject More Time For Religious Classes High School Release Time To Remain At 165 Hours Yearly

Idaho already allows high school students to miss 165 hours in the classroom each year for religious instruction, but a Senate committee balked Monday at raising the total to 215 hours.

The measure had passed the House earlier on a unanimous vote.

Supporters, mainly from southeastern Idaho, said the bill is needed to allow schools switching to the trimester system to have students out one period a day for religious teaching. Under the trimester system, there are fewer but longer class sessions than under the semester system.

Sen. Don Burtenshaw, R-Monteview, a longtime school board member, said his district likes the program because students attend Mormon Church seminary part of the day, freeing up classroom space.

“It divides up the student body to where we don’t have an overload on the system,” Burtenshaw said. “It’s worked very good.”

Under the bill, up to 21.5 percent of the instructional hours in the school year could have been spent out of school for religious instruction.

But Sen. Darrel Deide, R-Caldwell, a retired school superintendent, said school districts could accomplish the same thing by simply adding five or 10 minutes to their school days without cutting further into regular school instructional hours.

In the end, only two members of the Senate Education Committee supported the bill: Burtenshaw and Sen. Jack Riggs, R-Coeur d’Alene.

The release time for religious instruction, under Idaho law, is allowed only by school board policy and with parental approval. But to be constitutional, the law also allows release time for other purposes.

Deide said a district that has a release-time policy cannot deny a parent who says his or her child should be released for the same number of hours to work at McDonald’s.

“I think the board has no way to refuse that,” he said.

Rep. John Stevenson, R-Rupert, the bill’s sponsor, said students in his district who take the release time for religious instruction miss only a study hall.

Riggs said, “Really, it could be argued that this could be a good use of time - much better than a study hall. It could benefit students. … Certainly, if parents and students want to use their time in this way, I think it should be possible.”

Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, voted with the majority to kill the bill.

“It just seems like we need to have kids in school,” she said afterward. “If there are programs that parents want their students to be involved in, they should try to accommodate those outside the school day.”

Sen. Betsy Dunklin, R-Boise, said, “I would be interested in the rationale for passing a law like this in the first place. My religious education had to take place outside school time - I had a Wednesday afternoon catechism class for years. Why are we allowing kids to take school time for religious education?”

But Stevenson described church seminary classes as “part of the curriculum.”

“That’s a local school board option, I think,” he said.

The bill’s demise leaves the religious instruction release law on the books with the 165-hour limit. That accounts for just more than 16 percent of the instructional hours in a school year.

Riggs said he thought the measure might encourage some families to keep their children in school rather than home-schooling them.

“Schools are a little bit rigid,” he said. “Why drive people out of the public schools?”

, DataTimes