Rep. Novstrup brings bill for religious chaplains to be installed in public schools.

Have you ever noticed that there’s a lot of legislators who preach small government & local control.  Until they want to grab attention. And then they typically dump unfunded mandates on school districts.  Because we have another example of it.

Someone explain to me what schools exactly, are asking for legislation to install religious volunteers in public schools? Because House Bill 1054 was just dropped to do just that:

And, you can consider this yet another unfunded mandate that taxpayers will have to swallow, as schools will be required to publish a list, and for these people to submit to a criminal background check, and for space to be found.. with the bill going to taxpayers.

Of questionable constitutionality, it seems to reflect the rise in Christian Nationalism that we’re experiencing in this years’ legislative session where the lines of church and state are not just being pushed, but completely ignored and ran over with a truck, as with Senate Bill 51, the unfunded mandate for schools to print the ten commandments and hang them in every school classroom. Because everyone needs to learn about honoring their father and mother in gym, welding and accounting classes.

If a person wants to send their child to a religious or parochial school, by all means do so. I am a product of St. Joe’s in Pierre myself, and I enjoyed my elementary education. I have an Augustana Grad and a St. Scholastica grad among my kids. And they received fine educations.

But when we all attended in a public school setting, there is an expectation that there is a wall there – one that separates church & state.  I don’t get to expect my religious values are pushed on others, and there is the same expectation about others’ pushed on me & mine.

Yet some want to ignore Wednesday being viewed as church night, and make every day in school church day. A disturbing trend where principles that our country was founded on and ensconced in the first amendment are just being ignored.  We don’t live under sharia law. We don’t live under biblical canons – we are governed by the constitution, and the first amendment says that is not the way to act.

This bill, like several others, need to keep it in church. Religious counselors are fine on Wednesday church night when most students receive their religious instruction elsewhere. But they don’t belong in our schools.