KENNEWICK — A suggestion that the Prosser School Board should open its meetings with a prayer has resulted in objections from students and threats of legal action from a national organization.
During a meeting last week, board member Frank Vermulm randomly brought up the topic of starting their meetings with a prayer after the Pledge of Allegiance.
He suggested he or a pastor could lead the prayers and cited “a lot of issues” that the community and school district is facing.
“I just think we could use some divine intervention,” Vermulm told his fellow school board members.
While other school board members expressed interest in discussing the issue further, the board’s student representatives pushed back.
“I don’t think that religion should be brought up in schools at all. I don’t think that should happen,” said student representative Yoshimi Garcia. She described herself as an atheist and said it would be disrespectful to people who come from different religious backgrounds.
“I would tend to agree,” said another student representative, Noah Dempsey. “I think that that should be something that’s excluded. I mean, there’s already enough controversy when it comes to saying the Pledge of Allegiance. Why bring more controversy into something that doesn’t need it?”
If that was a decision, Dempsey added, the district would need to bring in prayers of all type — “any and all above” — to be inclusive.
Vermulm, who described himself as a man of faith, responded that he believed the U.S. Constitution allotted them the rights to pray during secular government meetings.
“I just think with some of the issues that we have, it would be very helpful,” he said.
The school board has not taken formal action, nor a vote, on this issue. So far, it’s only been discussed at the meeting, Superintendent Kim Casey told the Tri-City Herald on Thursday.
“All voices and opinions are always considered when a decision is made in the Prosser School District,” she said.
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Staff with the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation called Vermulm’s idea for prayer “unlawful” in a Thursday news release.
“Our public schools are paid for by anybody and everybody, including those with no religion,” the foundation’s Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor told the Tri-City Herald.
Gaylor said the discussion sends a “disrespectful signal” toward students’ freedom of religious practices and legal precedent. The foundation will consider a lawsuit if the school board goes any further, she said.
“We hope that the students’ perspective has caused the board to permanently reconsider its unlawful prayer plan. School board members are free to pray on their own time and dime, but should not misuse their civil authority to impose prayer on others,” Gaylor said in a statement.
The foundation claims school board prayer violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.
That clause prohibits the government, which in this case would be the Prosser School District, from “establishing” a state-based religion. The philosophy of the separation of church and state ensures governments cannot exercise undue influence over American’s religious perspectives.
In a Jan. 25 letter to Prosser School Board President Jason Rainier, foundation staff attorney Chris Line said the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently struck down prayer at school-sponsored events because such action constitutes “government favoritism towards religion.”
“It is beyond the scope of a public school board to conduct, or allow others to conduct, prayer as part of its meetings,” Line wrote.
The high court’s recent decision over a praying Bremerton football coach — Kennedy v. Bremerton School District — did not alter law “regarding these kinds of coercive prayer practices, nor did it overrule these previous decisions,” Line writes.
Gaylor went a step further, calling Kennedy’s narrative of praying alone at the 50-yard-line “dishonest” and “phony.” The case is different from a school board prayer proposal because students and attendees are forced to participate.
The foundation makes comparisons to a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals case it won against Chino Valley Unified School District Board of Education a few years ago.
In that case, student representatives required to attend meetings were subject to Christian prayers and Bible readings against their will. Those meetings “resembled a church service more than a school board meeting,” the foundation says.
In a short and quick reply to Line’s letter, the same day, Casey gave the following response: “We are in receipt of your letter. We have not taken any action on this matter it was strictly a discussion.”
Vermulm could not be reached immediately by the Herald on Thursday about the issue.
Other local governments have allowed “legislative prayer” at the beginning of their meetings but with restrictions.
Last year, the Kennewick City Council agreed it would begin allowing residents to give a prayer at the beginning of their meetings.
Those prayers are limited to 60 seconds and one person can give no more than two prayers a year.
