Former charter school poised for fight

NAMPA - While bargain hunters descended on the remains of what used to one of the biggest charter schools in Idaho, buying desks and textbooks at auction, attorneys prepared for battle in a case that defined Nampa Classical Academy's short existence.

The founders of the charter school tangled with Idaho officials over the use of the Bible and other religious texts shortly after opening in August 2009. The argument would continue even after the Idaho Public Charter School Commission closed the academy over troubled finances this summer.

The academy is now challenging the dismissal of a federal lawsuit against Idaho officials who barred the Bible and other religious texts as a teaching tool in history and literature courses.

The Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based Christian legal group, is representing the charter school in the case and has a Jan. 10 deadline to submit opening briefs with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

"I have never been aware of any case that includes such a broad-based censorship," said David Cortman, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. "In our opinion, it violates the federal constitutional rights of the teachers and the students."

The U.S. Supreme Court banned ceremonial school Bible readings in a 1963 ruling but said "the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities" so long as material is "presented objectively as part of a secular program of education."

Public schools across the country have traditionally avoided Bible courses - and the potential controversy that surrounds them - but hundreds do offer voluntary classes to students.

A deputy attorney general who serves as counsel to the Idaho charter school commission concluded last year that the state constitution "expressly" limits use of religious texts.

The commission, which was created in 2004 to give charter schools an alternative route to approval besides the local school board, adopted that opinion and told Nampa Classical Academy they couldn't use these texts.

The academy argued that the practice goes unchecked elsewhere in Idaho and filed a federal lawsuit against Idaho officials in September 2009, just a month after it opened with more than 550 students.

U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge dismissed the lawsuit in May, determining the ban did not violate the school's rights. The academy is now challenging that ruling in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Charter schools are funded with public money but given more freedom in how they operate.

This movement to create new, more autonomous public schools allowed the Nampa academy to establish a charter school with classical arts curriculum grounded in grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. The academy wanted to use the Bible and other religious texts for its literary and historic qualities, as part of a secular education program.

At a school where students were taught to defend their liberties, to surrender the legal fight over use of religious texts was not an option, said founder Isaac Moffett, an educator who is now unemployed.

"We would have become nothing more than hypocrites," Moffett said.