Minnesota school district warned to halt school’s ‘field trips’ to Christian church

[unhappycamper]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/02/04/minnesota-school-district-warned-to-halt-schools-field-trips-to-christian-church/

Minnesota school district warned to halt school’s ‘field trips’ to Christian church
By David Ferguson
Tuesday, February 4, 2014 14:49 EST

A Golden Valley, Minnesota high school has been warned by the American Humanist Association to discontinue its field trips to a local Lutheran church. According to Minneapolis’ StarTribune.com, lawyers for the group warned the Robbinsdale School District by letter that sending public school students to a church to do charity work for a religious group is a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state.

On a so-called “field trip” in 2013, students of Golden Valley’s School of Engineering and the Arts assembled food baskets for the Christian charity Feed My Starving Children at Calvary Lutheran Church. The packaged meals were to be sent to Haiti to feed people still struggling after that country’s historic earthquake in 2010.

The family of one student complained to the school district, but the complaint was reportedly ignored.

A statement on the Appigani Humanist Center’s website said, “A Minnesota public school is being warned by the American Humanist Association’s Appignani Humanist Legal Center to stop sending students on unconstitutional field trips to a nearby Christian church to create ‘manna’ packages for a Christian nonprofit group. The letter was sent today by the Appignani Humanist Legal Center (AHLC) to the administrators of the School of Engineering and Arts in Golden Valley, MN, Principal Kim Hiel and Executive Director of Academics Lori Simon after the AHLC was alerted to the violation by a family enrolled in the suburban Minneapolis school. The letter asserts that the ‘school has quite clearly violated the Establishment Clause by directing students to attend a pervasively Christian, proselytizing environment.’”

[Feral Child]

1. K&R n/t

[sarisataka]

2. Kind of torn on this...

yes it is being run through a church, but it is providing food to children. Is the cost of separation of church and state children dying from lack of food?
I do not know if there is a secular equivalent they could go to instead

[dflprincess]

3. I have problems with public school groups going because I question how voluntary

the participation really is.

I've been to the Feed My Starving Children warehouse in Eagan with groups from work and they do say a prayer before the work begins. (They usually preface it with "if nobody minds" - though I have yet to see anyone jump up and say "I do.&quot

Despite the prayer, I did not find them to be overly evangelical - in fact while we were filling the food bags they play some pretty good rock and roll from the '60s. I've always been out there with people more my age so I don't know if they gear the music to the age group that's working or not but it really helps make the work fun and the time go by fast.

[Randomthought]

4. Was this on a school day?

If this "field trip" was on a day when school was in session then why were these children not in school learning algebra or grammar?
If it was on a weekend then it would have been voluntary I would think. Also don't parents have to sign permission slips for field trips?