FW: [Schools Matter] Eliminating Rights and Options on the Road to School Choice

["Horn, James" <jhorn@monmouth.edu>]

________________________________

From: Jim Horn [mailto:ontogenyx@mac.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 11:07 AM
To: Horn, James
Subject: [Schools Matter] Eliminating Rights and Options on the Road to
School Choice


 <http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/710/1340/1600/Separation.jpg> When
you hear privatizers talk about school choice, you can be sure that they
have in mind the elimination of the most viable option, public schools.
By offering church schools and chain gang charters as "choices" for
desperate parents who want something other than their under-resourced
and under-staffed public school in their rotting neighborhood, the
privatizing politicians play to their theocratic and corporatistic power
base.

But what about the choices and rights of students and teachers that
become constrained or eliminated by a lack of public protections under
the law. The New York Times has this story today
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/09/business/09religious.html?ei=5043&en=
0a371cdc4b385659&amp;ex=1161057600&partner=EXCITE&pagewanted=print>  on
the discriminatory practices that become protected by a church-state
separation clause that is never mentioned when federal money is being
dumped to the faith-based, but comes front and center when church-state
separation can be used to protect the Church and its institutions from
legal and ethical responsibilities to employees, acolytes, or students:


	J. Jeffrey Heck, a lawyer in Mansfield, Ohio, usually sits on
management's side of the table. "The only employee cases I take are
those that poke my buttons," he said. "And this one really did."

	His client was a middle-aged novice training to become a nun in
a Roman Catholic religious order in Toledo. She said she had been
dismissed by the order after she became seriously ill - including a
diagnosis of breast cancer. 

	In her complaint, the novice, Mary Rosati, said she had visited
her doctor with her immediate supervisor and the mother superior. After
the doctor explained her treatment options for breast cancer, the
complaint continued, the mother superior announced: "We will have to let
her go. I don't think we can take care of her." 

	Some months later Ms. Rosati was told that the mother superior
and the order's governing council had decided to dismiss her after
concluding that "she was not called to our way of life," according to
the complaint. Along with her occupation and her home, she lost her
health insurance, Mr. Heck said. Ms. Rosati, who still lacks health
insurance but whose cancer is in remission, said she preferred not to
discuss her experience because of her continuing love for the church. 

	In court filings, lawyers for the diocese denied her account of
these events. If Ms. Rosati had worked for a business or almost any
secular employer, she might have prevailed under the protections of the
Americans With Disabilities Act. Instead, her complaint was dismissed in
December 2002 by Judge James G. Carr of the United States District Court
for the Northern District of Ohio, who decided that the order's decision
to dismiss her "was an ecclesiastical decision" that was "beyond the
reach of the court" because "the First Amendment requires churches to be
free from government interference in matters of church governance and
administration." . . . 



--
Posted by Jim Horn to Schools Matter
<http://schoolsmatter.blogspot.com/2006/10/eliminating-rights-and-option
s-on-road.html>  at 10/09/2006 10:34:00 AM