Bill would push schools on prayer & Scouts support
___By Robert Marus
___ABP Washington Bureau
___WASHINGTON (ABP)--Public school districts that unlawfully restrict student prayer or deny equal access to the Boy Scouts will lose federal funding if President Bush signs an education bill that has been revised to include such provisions.
___A congressional conference committee working to present a final version of the education bill to Bush has approved language that, for the first time ever, ties federal education funds to whether a school district complies with U.S. Department of Education guidelines on student-led prayer in schools.
___Language approved by the committee also denies federal funding to school districts that do not allow the Boy Scouts equal access to school facilities for meetings.
___The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment prohibits state-sponsored school prayer but protects voluntary student-led prayer and certain other religious expressions in public schools. The compromise education bill, adopted by the House-Senate conference committee, would deny funding to any school district that violates Education Department guidelines designed to clarify students' rights to religious expression.
___The language regarding Boy Scouts was a compromise from an amendment to the bill--passed earlier by the Senate on a partisan vote--that gay-rights groups viewed as discriminatory. The Boy Scouts have been an issue in many school districts since the Supreme Court last year ruled the Scouts are a private organization and thus have a right to discriminate against gays serving in their leadership. In the past year, school districts in several communities have dropped school sponsorship of Boy Scout troops in protest of the Boy Scouts' policies.
___Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., sponsored the original Boy Scouts amendment to the Senate version of the education bill. It attempted to deny funds to any school district that denied access to organizations on the basis of their anti-homosexual policies, specifically naming the Boy Scouts as such a group.
___Gay-rights groups said Helms' amendment was unnecessary because denying the Scouts equal access to schools for meeting space already is illegal.
___However, David Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, said the Helms amendment was unclear enough that it could have led some school districts to believe they would have their funding withdrawn if they declined to continue sponsoring or promoting Boy Scout troops.
___The compromise language finally passed by the House-Senate committee clarifies that schools will lose federal funds only if they illegally violate the Boy Scouts' rights to have equal access to school buildings for meetings. Therefore, schools may withdraw sponsorship of Boy Scout groups as an act of protest without endangering their funding, so long as they also deny access to other groups.
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