High School Moves Baccalaureate After Students Protest Prayer Ban

Saturday’s baccalaureate at Duarte High School will be moved off campus so that for the first time in four years, graduating students can pray at the ceremony.

School district officials announced the move Tuesday, a day after more than 150 students at the San Gabriel Valley high school walked out of classes, carrying signs that said, “No Prayer, No Class.”

The students returned to class after Duarte Unified School District Supt. Robert Packer agreed to include prayers in the service that has traditionally accompanied graduation. He moved the event off campus to avoid clashing with court decisions banning prayer at public schools.

Packer, who oversees the 4,500-student district 20 miles east of Los Angeles, said the baccalaureate will be hosted by the city’s alliance of ministers at the Duarte Performing Arts Center, adjacent to the high school. The ceremony will be nondenominational, Packer said.

The high school usually holds its graduation on the athletic field and the baccalaureate in the high school gymnasium. Four years ago, prayers were eliminated from the service.

Prayer in public schools has been banned under a 1962 U.S. Supreme Court decision, but an estimated three-fourths of the 1,000 school districts in California have traditionally included prayers or other religious messages at graduation, according to attorneys who represented school districts in an appeal before the state Supreme Court.

The court ruled 5 to 2 on May 6 that invocations and benedictions at public high school graduations violated the doctrine of separation of church and state. California Atty. Gen. Daniel E. Lungren has asked the court to withdraw its ruling and reconsider the issue after the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a similar case next year.

Duarte High Principal Albert Scalise said the baccalaureate would be optional for the 220 graduating seniors. “We’re doing a little bit of our own praying” that the ceremony won’t be challenged, he said.

District officials say that they are following the lead of school districts such as Monrovia, Arcadia and Covina Valley, which have moved their baccalaureates, including prayer, off campus.

Carol Sobel, an ACLU attorney active in getting the state Supreme Court to ban prayers at graduations, said she has no objection to an off-campus baccalaureate sponsored by a church group.

But “it would be unlawful for the district to participate in any way such as passing out flyers or having teachers tell students they should attend,” she said.

Seniors who requested religious services this year were told it was unconstitutional. They protested Monday after discovering other local school districts allowed off-campus prayers, Packer said.

“The whole purpose and history of the baccalaureate is a religious service for the graduating class and being a Christian . . . I think it’s a good thing,” said senior Denise Murkar, 17. “We were upset because we were not given a choice.