Church lines equal school lines?

"I would have to say this is pretty clear: We don't gerrymander our governmental lines around religious parameters," Rabbi Saperstein said. "If you need to do that, you'll find school districts, governmental agencies, zoning commissions restructuring all kinds of lines in order to ensure there is religious consolidation and uniformity."

Religious freedom scholar Derek Davis said that Provo School District officials aren't necessarily breaking the law by talking with LDS Church leaders.

"It would depend on what their goals are," said Davis, former editor of the "Journal of Church and State" and now graduate school dean at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor in Belton, Texas.

Provo's superintendent said that he didn't seek out the meeting with LDS Church leaders, but that an LDS stake president who's an advocate for Central City families — including those living in the Boulders apartments — arranged it.

"They were just one of several groups we talked to," Superintendent Randy Merrill said. "In general, they gave us insights into the social and family issues of people they serve in this particular community. Similar information came earlier from United Way leadership."

Alder, who attended the meeting with the superintendent and LDS leaders, said that the Boulders residents are assigned to six different wards.

The school district proposal puts them in three different schools, Alder said.

Packard, the school district member who talked with Grandview Hill church leaders, said that keeping peers together may help their success in school.

"When you have a situation when the kids don't feel like they have friends or a safe place, it becomes difficult for them," Packard said. "I'm think taking into account decisions such as LDS wards that can only help."

From the 1870s through 1890, Salt Lake City counted about 15 school districts, each a different ward. Classes met in ward houses, said Fred Buchanan, a retired educational studies professor emeritus at the University of Utah.

Secondary schools were private and divided mostly along religious lines. Elementary schools were quasi-public.

"Some of them taught the Book of Mormon," said Buchanan, author of the 1996 book, "Culture Clash and Accommodation."

A group of non-LDS territorial legislative leaders visited government leaders in Washington, D.C., and a plan was discussed to federalize the state's school system to ensure it was secular.

To prevent federal intrusion, the state passed the Free Public School Act in 1890.

"It was real public schools in the sense that although the majority of the children were Mormons, the vast majority of the teachers were non-Mormons," Buchanan said. "That was deliberate. There was a place in the school register with the student's name, the parents, the religion."

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