ACLU asks jail for tangipahoa school officials

[AnnInLa]

http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050518/APN/505180563&cachetime=3&template=dateline

ACLU asks jail for Tangipahoa school officials


By ADAM NOSSITER
Associated Press Writer

May 18, 2005


Teachers and administrators in Tangipahoa Parish continue to violate a court-imposed school prayer ban, according to the ACLU, which Wednesday asked a federal judge to send them to jail. For the fourth time in less than two months, the ACLU has formally notified the judge that school officials are flouting the prayer ban, imposed to settle a lawsuit the civil liberties group filed for a parent in 2003.

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This time, the group says, an elementary school teacher in Tangipahoa Parish repeatedly held prayers in her fourth grade class, encouraged students to bring their Bibles to school, held Bible study classes in the cafeteria of D.C. Reeves Elementary School, and admonished students who didn't show up for the class.

In addition, the ACLU cites a prayer it says was recently given at Amite High School, over a loudspeaker, at an awards banquet. The prayer ended with the words "In Jesus' name we pray," violating the ban; the principal of the school sat silently by.


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"I have been teaching for 12 years, and I can do what I want in my own classroom or at school," the teacher, Pam Sullivan, told a student teacher who protested about her predilection for prayer and Bible study in class, according to the ACLU. Repeatedly, she "compelled" a student to recite a prayer in class before lunch, the group said. In addition, Sullivan expressed her disapproval of mixed-race marriages to the student teacher, who was "confronted" for challenging the frequent classroom praying, and told to "voluntarily withdraw." Once, she "entered the classroom and abruptly ordered the student to cease teaching and the ordered the students to stand and recite a prayer," according to the court filing.


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http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050518/APN/505180563&cachetime=3&template=dateline

[CottonBear]

1. What is wrong with these people? They are so insecure

about their faith that they feel the need to force it on innocent children?

:wtf:

[davidinalameda]

3. they're not insecure

they're "right"

[davidinalameda]

2. can we sell these states to Mexico

or maybe just cut them loose on their own

[AnnInLa]

4. I live in LA and think I would rather be attached to Mexico now....eom