School district officials currently plan to continue using Cottonwood Church as a venue for the chorale festival and the middle school promotion, according to the assistant superintendent of educational services.
The decision to continue using the church as an event venue is pending a final decision by the, school board which will discuss the issue on Feb. 11, said Assistant Superintendent Mark Johnson.
He said district staff was recommending that LAUSD continue using the church as a location for school events.
The use of the mega-church has become an issue since September 2013, when the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent a letter to Los Alamitos Unified School District that called on the district to find a secular venue for events. The foundation maintains that it is unconstitutional for the district to hold events at a church.
The organization has been described as an atheist group. The organization’s website describes the foundation as being committed to the separation of church and state.
In this particular controversy, the foundation was apparently responding to a complaint from a parent in the district.
“The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits public schools, such as those in the district, from holding graduation ceremonies and other events in houses of worship,” wrote Andrew Seidel, a foundation staff attorney, in the September letter.
“The practice of graduations being held in churches in particular has been struck down by courts,” wrote Seidel.
The letter went on to cite several cases that apparently support the foundation’s position, a position the foundation repeated in a Jan. 7, 2014 letter to the district.
Johnson said the district respectfully disagrees with the foundation.
“I don’t know that all venues are off the table,” Johnson said.
Johnson said the district had looked at other venues. However, he cited the proximity of Cottonwood Church and the quality of both the facility and its staff as reasons to continue using the location.
Rona Sulimoff supports the district’s use of Cottonwood Church. Sulimoff said there are no crosses in the church.
Sulimoff is the parent of an eighth-grader at McAuliffe Middle School. Sulimoff told the Sun she is appalled that the woman who complained about the church venue has gotten the Freedom From Religion Foundation to support her opposition when the woman doesn’t even have an eighth-grader being promoted this year.
Sulimoff said her dad is an atheist and said he told her it doesn’t bother him to go into a church because it doesn’t mean anything to him.
Foundation attorney Seidel, however, has a different perspective. “ Would 70 percent of the Christians be comfortable attending a mosque?” he asked.
He said that the U.S. government is for “we the people,” not “we the Christians.
According to Seidel, the courts have said that when schools send students to churches, it is reasonable for students to think that the school endorses the church.
Karin Erikson, another parent of an eighth-grader, has a daughter in the choir.
Erikson said she has no idea where the eighth-grade awards will be held.
Erikson is worried about the potential financial cost of the dispute to the school district.
“So many people are upset that one person’s opinion will cost the district so much money,” Erikson said.
Erikson is not convinced the separation of church and state argument is valid.
“I don’t think there’s any laws that have been set in place,” Erikson said.
Erikson said Christians founded the country. However, she also said she wasn’t an expert in constitutional law.
Like fellow parent Sulimoff, Erikson said there are no crosses in the Cottonwood Church and doesn’t understand the objection to the district using the church for school events.
“When you are sitting in there, you don’t know you’re in a church,” Erikson said.
“These big mega-churches don’t look like churches,” Erikson said.
The school board will make a decision on Feb. 11.
“My correspondence with parents higher up in the PTA lead me to believe that the District will cave,” said Sulimoff in a letter to the Sun. “Who looses here? Our kids do.”
