Sunday school — Monday through Friday: Oklahoma joins states with ‘release time’ laws letting K-12 kids leave school for religious lessons
The Bible is read aloud at the Utah Capitol in 2013.Children in American public schools traditionally learned the three R’s: reading, writing and arithmetic. Today, students in more than half of the U.S. states can study a fourth R: religion. This time, the justices affirmed that public school officials could accommodate the religious wishes of parents by releasing their children for off-site instruction.
In all, 16 states have laws and one has a regulation giving schools boards the option of adopting policies permitting release time – from California and Montana to Massachusetts and West Virginia.While the remaining 21 states and Washington D.C. do not have laws on release time, parents or religious organizations can petition their local school board to establish a program.Oklahoma’s release-time law is consistent with those of other states. Even so, two questions arise.