School Board Rescinds Order to Post Ten Commandments

Reaffirming their belief that their schoolchildren lack a moral compass, trustees of the Val Verde Unified School District nonetheless voted Monday night to rescind their earlier decision to post the Ten Commandments at school offices.

The district, said school board President Robert Givens, could not afford the legal fees to fight the issue in court, where the matter was headed after a lawsuit was filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

“We wouldn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the education of the children,” Givens said after the board’s unanimous vote. “We have to respect the Supreme Court decision, and we didn’t want to chance having to use public funds to take on this fight.”

Trustees of the district, which encompasses parts of Moreno Valley and Perris, had voted unanimously in September to display the commandments, and reaffirmed its decision by a 3 to 1 vote earlier this month.

But after the ACLU sued, trustees met in closed session for 45 minutes Monday night and emerged with second thoughts.

A representative of the district’s teachers union recommended that the district refrain from posting the biblical rules because doing so would violate the law--and set a poor example for students.

Teacher Mary Lake said that posting the commandments would show favoritism to some students.

“I don’t want the state dictating religion to my children or my students,” she said.

Other speakers applauded the school board for taking a stand principled on Christian morals.

“We need to bring God back into the classroom,” Perris Mayor Al Landers told the board. “Let’s bring back some morals to our students.”

The board said it was still concerned by “student lack of respect for parents, teachers and . . . fellow students,” Givens said, reading a statement after the closed meeting.

“Most of the principles contained in the Ten Commandments are shared by every culture on this Earth, religious or otherwise,” he said. “And the Education Code requires us to instill civil values and virtues. The fact that some of these values are held also by religions does not make it unlawful to teach them in school.”

But Givens noted that the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1980 held that the display of the commandments violated the constitutional separation of church and state, recently agreed to review a similar case in Texas.

“We will await the Supreme Court’s guidance with respect to its decision,” he said.