PEARCY -- The Lake Hamilton School Board recently removed prayer as an item on its standard monthly meeting agenda after an attorney from the Freedom From Religion Foundation asked the school district's attorney, D. Scott Hickam, for its removal.
Earlier this month, the Wisconsin-based freethought association -- which, according to its website, consists of more than 30,000 atheists, agnostics and "skeptics of any pedigree" -- reported it had been successful in instigating the removal.
Karen M. Heineman, attorney for FFRF, said in a letter dated Jan. 4 that while board members are free to pray privately, praying at school board meetings "violates the constitutional requirement of religious neutrality in public schools."
The letter referenced various cases in which the supreme court had struck down prayers offered at school-sponsored events, and noted that prayer alienates those who are nonreligious. The nonreligious, the letter stated, make up the fastest-growing segment of the nation's population by religious identification, with 35% non-Christian, and more than one in four who identify as religiously unaffiliated.
A full copy of the letter is available here: https://bit.ly/3IYvQXr
Heineman said the association was contacted about the prayers by a parent.
"We kind of had a run of school board complaints at that time, but in this instance, we were contacted by a parent and a parent was actually attending a meeting and was surprised that there was a prayer," she said. "And (she) then looked at previous meeting minutes and discovered that it was a regularly scheduled part of the board meetings and then contacted us."
Heineman noted the district responded quickly.
"We sent it out Jan. 4 and we had a response Jan. 20. Sometimes prayer could be removed from the agenda but they continue to give prayer. And so we said, 'Just let us know if it's still happening,' and we have not heard back since then. So we will take them at their word. But it was removed from the agenda," she said.
Heineman said the response was in the form of a short email from Hickam, basically saying he had communicated with Lake Hamilton Superintendent Shawn Higginbotham and prayer had been removed from the standard agenda. She said Hickam sent a copy of the agenda from the most recent meeting, which indicated prayer was no longer on the agenda.
When reached for comment Thursday, school board members and district officials alike said they did not have a statement at this time, but that Hickam would be issuing a formal statement in the coming days.
"I will let the school and the school's attorney make any needed statements on this matter," board President Mike Tucker said.
"Any information would come from Lake Hamilton School in a formal statement," said the board's vice president, Mark Curry.
Lake Hamilton director of communications and public relations, Brian Bridges, said, "D. Scott Hickam will be responding to your request on behalf of the district."
Though taken off the standard agenda, prayer was still offered during both the February and March regular meetings. A recording of the March meeting accompanies this article on the newspaper's app and its website.
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"That's kind of where I was concerned," Heineman said. "You can remove it from the agenda and it could still be happening. We communicate with a complainant. You know, we're kind of speaking for them, and we said if you attend meetings and it is still occurring, please let us know. And we have not heard otherwise."
David Cox, assistant director for the Family Council in Little Rock, told The Sentinel-Record Thursday it would like to see the district put prayer back on the agenda.
"We hope the school board will reconsider its decision to stop opening meetings with prayer. Public prayer at official meetings is a long-standing tradition in America. Courts have recognized that fact and upheld public prayer as constitutional," he said.
Heineman noted the quick response from the district was "great."
"We couldn't have asked for a better response," she said. "And part of it also is to say maybe school board meetings aren't the best place where, you know, prayer should be happening in the first place -- that it can certainly alienate some people as it did our complainant. And like I said, just being surprised that that's even happening at a school board -- prayer."
Heineman said the courts have decided that school board prayer is not constitutional based on the fact school boards are very closely associated with schools. Prayers within the public school context are not constitutional, she said, and many of the meetings include students participating and giving presentations or receiving awards.
"That's a factor that the courts, you know, really look at and are going to be more strict about prayer when there's going to be students present. And that's why we take the school board prayer context pretty seriously, because it is, you know, we feel, associated with public schools," she said.