The Wake County Board of Education gave first approval Tuesday to a few policy changes, including one that would allow students to sign out of school for one hour per week for religious instruction.
Another policy change overhauls who can challenge school materials and how. Both changes are required under new state law passed in the new state budget.
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The board still must vote a second and final time on any policy changes at a meeting later this fall. The board next meets Sept. 15.
The proposed changes to the religious-based exemptions policy add new guidelines to allow students to sign out of school up to one hour per week for religious instruction and have it count as an excused absence. Previously, such absences might have been counted as unexcused.
"The student’s parent or guardian must provide the principal with written documentation affirming that the student attended religious instruction for each time the student is requesting an excused absence. The student is responsible for making up all missed schoolwork," the proposed policy addition reads.
The board voted 9-0 Tuesday to give its first approval of the policy and will vote a second time later this fall.
Students have always been able to leave school during the day for religious reasons. The new state law guarantees that at least one hour, but no more than four hours, per week can now be excused for religious instruction.
Religious instruction wasn't previously listed among the reasons a parent could excuse their child from school.
The difference between excused and unexcused can have a bearing on different things at the school level, such as a student's ability to qualify for recognition or participate in extracurriculars.
The Wake school board is opting to allow only one hour of excused absences for religious instruction, believing the law only requires schools to provide the one hour.
Several board members said they were concerned about students missing more school and singled out one provider of religious instruction that specifically targets schools, LifeWise Academy. The Ohio-based Christian organization is rapidly expanding across the country, and its model is designed to "reinstall" religious education into the public school day.
Board members worried that students would feel pressured to attend the religious instruction by their classmates and said they'd heard of that happening in other schools where children came back from the instruction with candy.
"It's more than just the lost class time, which is terrible; it's what it's going to do to other children," said Board Member Jennifer Job, who is Jewish.
Several community members also objected Tuesday night, raising concerns about who is vetting the providers of the religious instruction.
Board Member Cheryl Caulfield said she'd reached out to LifeWise, who told her that their students have improved school performance.
Caulfield told the school board the organization could serve as mentors.
"We keep talking about [community] partners," she said. "This is one."
Superintendent Robert Taylor said the district would look into how the district could vet or background check the people who come to pick up students to attend religious instruction.
Board Member Sam Hershey said he also wants the district to revisit, before the final vote, language that would make it clear students still needed to turn their assignments in at the same time as other students who didn't attend the religious instruction.
"[If] Sam is leaving for his religious day, he better still turn in his math homework," said Hershey, who was frustrated with the law change.
Objecting to supplementary materials
The school board also gave first approval to another policy change to the process for objecting to materials in schools, which will bring it in line with a new state law established in the recently passed state budget.
School districts, including Wake, generally already have a way to challenge materials, and the new state law replaces them.
The challenge must indicate the materials are "obscene," age-inappropriate, or inconsistent with academic standards. The new law, and Wake's proposed policy, establishes a new community media advisory board — replacing any current one — that would be made up of nine educators at all school levels and three parents at all school levels. The committee must reach a recommendation within two weeks of a challenge, and the school board would have the final say at its next meeting.
Several Wake school board members complained that the new law was vague in how it's written.
Current school board policy limits who can challenge books to parents and guardians, and the law changes that to any parent, guardian, teacher, student or resident of the district's geographic area.
Some board members said it's not clear how the school district can determine whether someone is a resident of the county.
Board Member Lynn Edmonds called the legislation "misguided" but noted the board needed to adopt it to demonstrate compliance with the law.
The board voted 8-1 to move the policy to a second and final vote later this fall.
The lone board member opposed was Caulfield, who said the objections to books are often common-sense objections to sexual content.
Recent debates about book challenges have centered around the sexual content contained in some books, with some saying the content is too mature and others saying the content is minimal and that efforts to remove books are politically motivated.