The Knox Community School Corporation will not be allowing students to take religious education classes for credit in the near future.
Last year, the Indiana General Assembly approved an update to state law that lets public secondary schools award academic credit for religious instruction offered by a church or similar organization, if the school board adopts a policy allowing it. Knox School Superintendent Dr. William Reichhart asked board members Monday not to move ahead with such a policy.
“This is where they would actually receive school credit for attending those classes, so there’s a little bit more to it than just letting them go,” he explained. “This would be that if they studied the Book of Genesis and passed in a religious education class, that we would give them a credit in literature, let’s say. And I just don’t think we want to go down that road.”
Under the updated law, classes would have to be evaluated on “purely secular criteria” and academic credit could not involve any test for religious content or denominational affiliation.
Locally, the Culver Community Schools Corporation is exploring the possibility of letting students take religious classes as electives. Reichhart said Knox is not currently releasing students for religious instruction during the school day. “There are some communities where churches have put trailers on the school property or just off the school property, and the school board has allowed those kids during school day hours to walk to those trailers and receive religious instruction,” Reichhart said. “We are not doing that presently, so until we do, it didn’t feel like there was a need to approve that policy.”
He added that administrators would hope that any religious education would take place outside of school hours, but said they’d be willing to work with individual students if that isn’t an option. It was one of a number of potential policy updates discussed during Monday’s Knox School Board meeting.
