Church lines equal school lines?

PROVO — When the Provo School District Board of Education votes tonight on changing elementary school boundaries throughout town, the decision will be made with consideration of "ecclesiastical boundaries."

Ecclesiastical boundaries refer to the boundaries of LDS Church wards and stakes.

Provo Superintendent Randy Merrill and Board of Education President Darryl Alder met with local church leaders and received information about ward boundaries in the Boulders apartment complex. Board member Sandy Packard met with local church leaders to learn about boundaries on Grandview Hill.

And when parents in the South Lakeview neighborhood learned that their boundaries were to shift, they asked the school district to draw them along stake lines, and the district complied.

The meeting is at 7 p.m. at the district offices, 280 W. 940 North.

Provo is not the first district to consider ecclesiastical boundaries.

In 2006, when the Nebo School District altered boundaries, district officials in public meetings discussed ecclesiastical boundaries, too.

In fact, the history of education in Utah is peppered with discussions about ecclesiastical boundaries.

Religious freedom experts' opinions vary about whether considering church boundaries is ethical or in the spirit of the First Amendment, which prohibits government from establishing religion.

Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Washington, D.C., said that aligning school and ecclesiastical boundaries is problematic.

"This is the most religiously diverse country in the world," said Rabbi Saperstein, an attorney who also teaches church-state law at Georgetown University. "Sociologists tell us (there are) some 2,000 religious denominations and faith groups. So we are a pluralist country and the one place where people have the opportunity to meet different groups, they interact to learn tolerance and respect, is in our public school systems in America."

Provo's consideration of ecclesiastical boundaries, Rabbi Saperstein said, reminds him of a 1994 U.S. Supreme Court case, Board of Education v. Grumet, in which a Hasidic religious community attempted to redraw the boundaries of a New York town to exclude non-Hasidic students from attending the town's special education school.

The Supreme Court tossed out a New York law that created the school district.

"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."