School Role Models

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, Jan. 29 — Faced with under-performing public schools, pastors and members of inner-city black churches are borrowing a page from the Catholic-education playbook by opting to found elementary schools alongside their churches. The curriculum is “best described as meat and potatoes,” says the Monitor's Craig Savoye.

The newspaper reports that a church-school organizer in St. Louis was receiving more than a dozen calls per day “from groups that want to duplicate the effort in their communities.”

“Similar church-inspired schools already are taking shape in states from Georgia to California,” says the Monitor.

Nice Gift

CHRONICLE OF PHILANTHROPY, Feb. 4 — The first Catholic beneficiary to appear on the trade publication's list of the 60 most generous donors for 2001 is Jesuit-run Santa Clara University. Lorri Oakley's pledge of $25.8 million to the university and two other nonprofit organizations was the 24th-largest philanthropic donation for the year, says the newspaper.

‘Coercive’ Prayer?

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, Jan. 28 — A federal court ruled Jan. 24 that the Virginia Military Institute's (VMI) daily, student-led prayers before dinner were an “intense, coercive environment,” in favor of “religious indoctrination,” and ordered them halted, according to the newspaper.

VMI says it will appeal the ruling, which was rendered in response to a suit brought by the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, and.

PC in NJ

TOWNHALL.COM, Jan. 31 — Columnist Suzanne Fields reports that the New Jersey Legislature recently nixed a requirement for students to daily recite the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Civil-liberties groups questioned the phrase “unalienable right” to life, suggesting it was a sneaky euphemism for “anti-abortion” sentiment; one legislator objected to the word “creator” because it would force students to accept a “state-sponsored religion.”

Vineyard Workers

THE CRITERION, Jan. 21 — Second graders at St. Mary of the Immaculate Conception School in Aurora, Ind., recently smashed the grapes that will be turned into homemade wine for their first communion, according to the newspaper of the Indianapolis Archdiocese.

An annual practice at the school through the 1960s, the tradition had faded. Parents who remembered the event brought it back three years ago and hope to restore it as a tradition.

Church-State Charters

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, .27 — “Religious groups operating tax-supported [charter schools] have won praise from some, but critics question the church-state ties,” reports the Los Angeles daily. California charter schools are publicly funded but freed from many of the regulations imposed on non-charter schools.

Some accuse religious groups of advancing non-sectarian charter schools in the inner cities because it is “their only means of obtaining public education dollars,” writes the Times’ Richard FaussetAdvocates say religious groups can be ideal sponsors because they have classroom space, provide social services, and have “a strong sense of community and mission.”