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Bible Belt Upside the Head
This week, the Staunton, Va., School Board met to consider changing its 60-year-old Weekday Religious Education program. The WRE is a released-time Christian educational program, in which students in first, second, and third grades in the public school system, leave regular classes on school time in order to attend 30 minutes of religious instruction each week. Twenty such "released-time" programs exist across Virginia, and many more exist in at least 32 states nationwide. To comport with constitutional requirements, these religion classes happen either at local churches or in buses or trailers parked off school grounds. Estimates of the number of Staunton school kids currently participating in WRE differ slightly: The schools say that between 78 percent to 87 percent of the students at their four elementary schools attend WRE classes; JoAnne Shirley—state president for WRE—says that closer to 95 percent of the kids take part. The classes and facilities are funded by local churches.

Several Staunton parents—many of them new to an area often described as "Virginia's Bible Belt"—have come to feel that their children should not have to choose between being evangelized or ostracized on public school time....