School Board Won’t Endorse Christian Program : Education: Tustin trustees refuse to support religious group’s ‘Chapel on Wheels,’ which takes students from classes once a week for instruction.

The school board unanimously refused Monday night to endorse a Christian education program which takes students from classes 40 minutes a week for instruction in a “Chapel on Wheels.”

Tustin Unified School District Trustee Jane Bauer said parents would be “abrogating their responsibility” by asking the school to participate in the program.

Several representatives from Release Time Christian Education have been lobbying the district to endorse its “Chapel on Wheels,” a mobile trailer which visits schools to bring Bible study to fourth- and fifth-graders.

Under state law, school boards may allow students to be released from classroom instruction for religious education upon requests from parents.

The school district’s policy does just that but does not support organized, religious-study programs, Supt. David L. Andrews said. Instead, the district allows parents to decide individually to take their children out of class for religious training.

“It’s a permissive law,” Andrews said. “We recommend that the district continue what it’s doing, not endorse that program, and maintain the status quo.”

Nancy Gamson, a proponent of the Christian program, said that it would help “stem the tide of ills in the community caused by lack of religious education. . . . Our founding fathers meant for religion to provide a moral anchor. Children need more opportunity to avail themselves of a religious education.”

But Fernando Saldivar, student body president at Tustin High School, said: “Religious release time would be divisive and take away from educational time. It also goes against the Constitution and the separation of church and state.”

The Release Time Christian group has operated its programs for years in Orange Unified, Anaheim Elementary, Fullerton Elementary, Santa Ana Unified and Yorba Linda Elementary school districts.

The Release Time Christian Education group, an organization which trains and hires its own teachers, parks a mobile trailer off school property. Students, with permission from their parents, are released from class once a week for Christian training.

In his recommendation to the school board, Andrews noted that the school day is already affected by other “pull-out” programs, and that many churches in the community provide religious education programs that do not interfere with the school day.