Wonderful article! Thanks for shedding light on an important topic. As the economy recovers and as expectations for church space continually rise, new churches will be moving into public schools more and more. As a planter of a church-in-a-school, I love that our message to the community is one of affirmation of existing structures (both literal and institutional). I'd like to briefly draw light on the fact that because our system has a church as a tenant, the school system could recover a small amount of the massive budget shortcoming that all schools face. Also, the school custodians, people who are not typically paid a great deal, could receive overtime pay for 16 hours a month. The overwhelming response I've received from those who had to "sacrifice" for us to meet there, is "I don't know what I would have done had this opportunity not come when it did!"
This all begs the question, "Should schools look to churches to diversify their revenue stream?"
Shari -
I live very close to NYC and have heard both sides of the issue you are referring to. It is important to remember that the US Constitution (specifically the First Amendement) does not actually require the separation of church and state as most people recognize it. All it requires is that "Congress shall make no law repescting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". The agrument that the NYC Board of Education was making, as you pointed out, that by allowing people to worship in public schools when they are available (and thereby favoring Christians), they were inadvertently favoring one religion over the other. I do not believe that this is a Constitutional issue. It is merely a business opportunity for the city to make some extra revenue while schools are traditionally vacant.
John Van Buiten