Banner Graphic, Volume 13, Number 114, Greencastle, Putnam County, 20 January 1983 — Page 7

Christian schools: Lawsuits challenge state licensing, teacher certification

By IVER PETERSON e. 1983 vv. Times News Service DETROIT The rapid rise of conservative Christian day schools in recent >eais has brought with it a series of legal challenges to the rarely contested right of the states to set minimum educational standards and otherwise regulate the primary and secondary education children within their borders shall receive. The courts are now being called upon to decide cases that are cast as struggles between religious freedom and state law issues that have long lain dormant among mainstream parochial schools, where the biggest controversies have concerned state benefactions to religious schools aid for textbooks, busing and school lunches. for example. Across the nation since the mid-19705, six cases have been brought to court by private religious schools challenging state laws that required state licensing of schools, state certification of teachers and

opinion

LARRY GIBBS ER 7 BERNSEE Publisher Managing Editor

Letter to the Editor Operation Life praised

To the Editor: Operation Life administered to a man at our home on Monday. Jan. 17. We were so impressed with the efficiency, know-how and speed with which they worked. They can never be praised highly enough.

Signed letters are welcome

Letters to the editor should be typed or written elearl\ and limited to 300 words if possible. All letters must be signed and include the author’s address and telephone number. Letters containing personal attacks on individuals, libelous statements or

Farm analysts divided over payment-in-kind program's effect

By SETH S. KING c. 198:5 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON Now that the initial excitement over the Reagan administration’s new agricultural payment program is subsiding, analysts are divided over whether it will have any real effect this year on the badly depressed farm economy. The “crop swap’' arrangement would give surplus wheat, corn, rice or cotton to farmers who reduced their 1983 acreage in those crops by 10 to 30 percent beyond participating in the 20 to 25 percent paid reduction program already offered for this year. Its twin objectives are to reduce the government’s costs in storing nearly two years' domestic supply of wheat and more than half a year's supply of corn, and to take more than 23 million acres of grain and cotton land out of production this summer. The latter move w'ould reduce the surplus somewhat and perhaps by next fall improve net farm earnings, now at the lowest level since 1933 because of falling farm prices and rising production costs. Skeptics among farmers and private analysts contend that the new program will serve only as further proof that there is little the Agriculture Department can do, short of bankrupting the federal Treasury, to reduce the price-depressing grain and cotton surpluses except to create another bureaucratic acronym, in

Votes, not economics, at heart of Social Security 'breakthrough'

" Let’s leave out '“NO TAXATION 3 ’WITHOUT ‘REPRESENTATION*’! What congress would vote taxes without consulting the people?"

state rules on curriculum. The private schools have lost most of these cases, but there are signs the tide may be turning. Last month, a Michigan court found in favor of the Bridgeport Baptist Academy and the Sheridan Road Christian Schools, both near Saginaw, by striking down state laws requiring private schoolteachers to be certified by the state and requiring private schools to meet the educational standards of public schools in their districts. And in Maine on Feb. 21, the Bangor Baptist Church and 20 other churches that sponsor schools will take on the state in federal court in Bangor. The churches maintain that state laws requiring licensing of schools and certification of teachers are violations of Federal civil rights law. Existing court-made law on these issues imposes three questions that must be addressed in such cases: Is the claim to be a religious school valid? Do the state rules

They are a wonderful team. The community is truly blessed by having such a capable unit. Rill and Imogene Kiger rural Fillmore

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this case PIK, for payments in kind. The experts agree that farmers are keenly interested in the plan, the only new farm commodity aid program produced bv the Reagan administration in its first two years. The Farm Bureau Federation, the country 's largest and most conservative farm organization, has endorsed the program in principle and urged members to participate. Among farmers of winter wheat, who planted last fall, enthusiasm for the new plan was said to be in direct proportion to the condition of that crop and how the early spring weather would affect it. Earl Rosenbaum, a Pratt. Kan., wheat farmer, said last week that nearly 80 percent of the farmers in his area were alreadyparticipating in the 20 percent acreage reduction program and thus were eligible for the new payment program. “But to get in on PIK, we'd have to plow under eome real good-looking wheat, and it wouldn't pay us to do that,’’ Rosenbaum said. “However, I just came up through northwest Oklahoma Thursday, and their wheat is in very bad shape from dryness. Unless that changes, most of those farmers will gladly be in the PIK program.’’ The analysts also agree that if there is to be even a slight reduction of the surplus next October, virtually all the grain and

impinge on the free exercise of religious ideals? Finally, is there an overriding state interest in enforcing its school regulations? The first criterion, aimed at unmasking nonchurch schools operating under the guise of religion, has not been at issue in the recent Christian school cases. The remaining tests, however, are the sticking points. “We regarded the certification rules in Michigan as interference.’’ said W'illiam B. Ball, a constitutional lawyer from Harrisburg, Pa., who argued the Michigan case and will handle the Maine trial. “In Michigan,” Ball continued, “the state said a religious school may not have any teacher who is not state-certified if you have that we’ll shut you down. Well, these fundamentalist schools cannot find a very wide market of born-again, committed Christians who are also certified. ” State certification of teachers. Ball added, has overtones suggesting that the

state may select just who may wish to follow a religious calling and teach in a Christian school. Their objections, he said, come “as a matter of religious vocation, just like a nun in a Catholic school. They may not, they feel, as a religious matter, go to the state to get a permit to carry out that desire to teach children.” “That’s fine,” responded Rufus Brown, the Maine deputy attorney general who will face Ball in the Bangor case. “As long as they posses the minimum qualifications required for certification: a college education, some training in the subject matter that they're going to teach, some training in the methods of teaching, some knowledge of the learning process, some practice teaching. These are qualities that they themselves, through their own certification organizations, require too.” The third legal point that can arise the state’s overriding interest in insuring an education for all of its children is met, defenders of the Christian schools main-

cotton farmers will have to get into the program and not piant at least 45 percent of their farms. But neither the private analysts nor the Agriculture Department's soothsayers will have any reasonable guess of how many farmers will play in this newgame until after the signup period ends March 11. For example, a quick study by the Pioneer Seed Co. assumes that about 60 percent of the country's corn farmers will participate in the paid reduction program and that about three quarters of these will also participate to some degree in the additional reduction under payments in kind. If only 10 percent of the corn land goes into the program, a corn crop of 7.5 billion bushels could be produced with nearnormal weather and subsoil moisture conditions and with plenty of inorganic fertilizer available at low costs. This would be nearly 400 million bushels more than is now being consumed, and the surplus w ould actually be increased. Even if the maximum 30 percent of the corn land is put under the payment-in-kind program, the study showed, farmers could still produce a crop of 6.8 billion bushels, which would make only a slight dent in the surplus. In presenting the plan to Congress. Agriculture Secretary John R, Block said it might save $1 billion to $5 billion over the

By WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. Universal Press Syndicate The Great Social Security Breakthrough of 1983 may be a political triumph, which is the name we give to measures satisfactory to Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, and should be limited to declarations of war and resolutions decreeing We Love Mother Day. What was wrong with Social Security, we are encouraged to forget, is that too much money was going out. In such situations, the Democrat quick fix is: Well, get more money coming in - tax more. The Republican solution is supposed to be: Reduce the amount of money going out. The 1983 breakthrough is very nearly a total victory for the Democrats. CONSIDER, for a moment, the means by Which the breakthrough proposes to raise $lB billion (during the 1983-1989 period the breakthrough is specifically designed to cover). Here is the description of one reform, as given by The New York Times: “Make the self-employment Social Security tax rate comparable to the combined employer-employee rate, effective 1/1/84. Allow one-half of the combined rate to be deducted as a business expense.’ ’ What this means is that Mrs. Jones, who has a one-woman stenographic service, will now increase her Social Security payment to twice what she would pay if Mrs. Jones were working for Kelly Girls Inc. Having done that, she will take 6.7 per cent of the income and subtract it from her

tain, by evidence showing in c.ourt that educational attainment levels in those schools are often higher than those of surrounding public schools. Catholic and Lutheran schools and Jewish yeshivas, representing the mainstream of traditional religious education in this country, have lived with these rules for years. Why are the Christian schools different 9 Ralph Yarnell. executive director of the Maine Association of Christian Schools, addressed that question by saying: “I think in many cases that some of these schools are very old, and they have not been sensitized to what liberty really is and what the erosion of it means. There was a day when we didn't see anything wrong with it either, until we realized some of the things we're talking about in the court case. “Another factor is that some of them don't want to give up their state funds.

next three years in the costs of storing and handling current surpluses. Yet all except a fraction of the more than 3.5 billion bushels of grain, mostly wheat and corn, and of the 3.8 million bales of upland cotton now in storage are still in the on-farm reserve rather than in Commodity Credit Corp. warehouses. Farmers received loans for placing grain and cotton in this reserve, with the stored grain as collateral. Their payments in kind will be in the canceling of these loans. The government would not have to pay the current storage fee of 26 cents a bushel on the reserve grain it gives back. But the analysts say they believe relatively little of the grain and cotton the government has to pay to store in the credit corporation's w arehouses would go out as payments in kind. The new program will certainly not require any additional outlays from the 1983 budget, since the loans on reserve grain have already been charged against that budget, the Office of Management and Budget says. But if these loans are canceled and the collateral grain goes back to the farmers, the charges for these transactions will have to be met in the fiscal year 1984, in which Congress has to replenish the credit corporation's revolving fund.

taxable annual gross earnings. But since Mrs. Jones is now assessed over 9 per cent on the grounds that, after all. she will be getting the same benefits as if she worked for an employer that was contributing 6.7 per cent, why then she really isn’t paying all that much more, and now she is getting a deduction, which she didn't get before. Are you confused? That’s the idea. THE MAJOR VICTORY for Mr Reagan is held to be the shift forward by six months of the COLA, which is the cost-of-living adjustment. The value of that concession is held to be S4O billion. The wonderful irony here is that any rise in the cost of living presupposes a continuation of inflation. So that we are supposed to anticipate continuing inflation. Another way of putting this is that Mr. Reagan's anti-increased-spending provision only yields dollars and cents provided we have inflation. The more inflation. the more we save. Get it 0 But Tip O'Neill got what he wanted by -- raising taxes. Social Security will in 1984 rise to 14 per cent. 7 per cent each for employer and employee. And it will rise progressively to 1990. when it is scheduled to reach 15.3 per cent. Meanwhile, the raise in the taxes is scheduled to bring in S4O billion during the period under discussion. NOW IF ONE WERE prepared to raise taxes as required to continue the present schedule of Social Security services, then

January 20,1983, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic

They’d rather have the state regulation. Our schools don’t take a dime in state or Federal monies we believe it is wrong from the standpoint of our religion, as well as because of all the strings attached.” Despite the current victory in Michigan, previous cases in which independent Christian schools have based claims for exemption from state regulation on religious freedom have not fared well. In the most celebrated case last year, a Nebraska school principal was jailed for refusing to hire state-certified teachers for his Faith Baptist School when the state courts there ruled in the state's favor. A North Dakota case on the same general issues went to the United States Supreme Court, where the state's right to regulate the religious schools was upheld. Similar laws were also upheld in North Carolina. Ohio. Hawaii and in a New Jersey case that applied to higher education only.*

the question of how to proceed would end right there. Just keep raising the payroll taxes. There is. however, a problem in doing this. It is a problem of what the economists call the “wedge." which is the difference between what John Jones keeps in his pocket and what you have to pay out to get John Jones to work for you. The bigger the wedge, the more expensive it is to hire. The more expensive to hire, the larger the unemployment. So: No matter what. Tip O’Neill gets what he wanted. And Reagan gets half of what he wanted, only if there is inflation in our future. OH YES. If you are on Social Security and you have outside income of $20,000 or more, one-half of your Social Security benefits will be taxed - which, up to a point, is fair enough. What point? Well, suppose you died before you had earned back what you actually paid into Social Security? Wouldn't you then have been taxed twice by the government'* Yes. But consider yourself lucky. Under the Great Breakthrough, you might have been taxed three times. What it all boils down to is that workers will continue to pay non-workers more money - much more money - than the non-workers accumulated in Social Security while they were working. But since they aren't working now. they’ll have more time to vote. And that is Tip's point.

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