AROUND THE STATES

OKio Legislature Expands School Voucher Program

Ohio lawmakers approved another school voucher program this summer, significantly expanding on the 10-year-old program in Cleveland.

In late July, Education Week reported that Republican Gov. Bob Taft signed into law the Ohio Educational Choice Scholarship Pilot Program, which will provide vouchers of up to $5,000 to as many as 14,000 students who attended poorly performing public schools.

The program is separate from the one that has been operating in Cleveland for a decade. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris that the Cleveland plan did not run afoul of the First Amendment principle of churchstate separation.

The Ohio Federation of Teachers blasted the new law as a serious blow to the state's public education system.

"Handing out tax-funded tuition vouchers will drain more funds from hard-pressed public school districts," said Tom Mooney, the group's president.

Mooney also cited research debunking the arguments that the Cleveland voucher program would improve students' education. "Legislators are ignoring the research to create a program that does not improve achievement," he said.

Tulsa Zoo Retreats On Planned Creation Exhibit

Officials in Tulsa, OkIa., have backed off from plans to display a creationism exhibit at the city zoo.

In early June at the behest of a local Religious Right activist, the Tulsa Park and Recreation Board voted to allow an exhibit at the Tulsa Zoo depicting the biblical account of God's creation of the world, as described in the Book of Genesis.

The activist, Dan Hicks, claimed the display was warranted because the zoo had other exhibits he interpreted as religious. Hicks, for example, complained to the board about a small statue of the Hindu god Ganesha in the Zoo's Elephant Encounter Museum. Ganesha, lord of wisdom and intelligence, is depicted in art as having an elephant's head. That exhibit also included a stuffed Dumbo elephant and a paper red, white and blue Republican Party elephant.

In a July 1 letter to the Tulsa mayor and park board officials, Americans United for Separation of Church and State urged the board to reverse its plan to erect a creationism exhibit.

"The proposed exhibit is by no means secular: It conveys a message of governmental endorsement of a very specific set of Judeo-Christian beliefs not shared by other religions or by many members of the Tulsa community," stated AU's letter.

In early July, the Park board voted to dump the plan for the creationism exhibit.

One board member told the Tulsa World that the board's reversal was partly due to the intense opposition to the planned exhibit.

'Holier Than Thou' Statue Passes Court Muster

A state university art display, which included a statue some argued sent an anti-Catholic message, does not violate the First Amendment, a federal appeals court has ruled.

Since the late 1990s, Washburn University's Campus Beautification Committee has selected statues for display in temporary outdoor sculpture exhibitions. In 2003, one of the statues caused an uproar on the Topeka, Kan., campus and spurred a professor and student to file a lawsuit arguing that the school had endorsed an anti-Catholic message.

The brouhaha centered on "Holier Than Thou," a depiction of a Roman Catholic bishop with a contorted facial expression and a miter that some in the community said looked like a penis.

After the university president defended the art exhibit and refused to order its removal, the professor and student filed a lawsuit arguing that the statue's presence on a public university campus constituted an unconstitutional endorsement of an antiCatholic message.

A U.S. district court dismissed the lawsuit's First Amendment argument early last year. On July 28, a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the lower court's decision.

Washburn President Dr. Jerry B. Parley responded to the complaints over the statue by arguing, in part, that "One of the purposes of art is to engage us intellectually and emotionally. This work apparently has fulfilled that function as there is a wide variety of commentary on the piece, ranging from support to opposition."

The 10th Circuit panel in O'Connor v. Washburn University refused to find the statue's placement on campus a sign of school-endorsed animus toward religion. Citing U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the appeals court found that the "reasonable observer" would be aware that the statue was one of many in an outdoor art exhibit.

Copyright Americans United for Separation of Church and State Sep 2005
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