When it became clear to high school theater teacher Gigi Cervantes that she couldn’t ignore a new state law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in her Texas classroom, she felt she had no choice. She gave up her favorite job.
“I just wasn’t going to force or impose religious doctrine on my students,” she said.
Texas is embarking on the nation’s largest attempt to hang the Ten Commandments in public schools, and the rush to implement a Republican-led mandate that took effect in September has forced some districts to make tough choices.
Federal courts have ordered more than two dozen of the state’s nearly 1,200 school districts to ban the posters, including on Tuesday, when a judge ruled that the mandate violates the First Amendment’s language guaranteeing religious freedom and prohibiting the government from establishing religion. Courts have also ruled against similar laws in Arkansas and Louisiana, and the issue is expected to reach the US Supreme Court.
But many Texas classrooms have come a long way with the law, which has spurred school board meetings, laid out guidelines for what to say when students ask questions and led to boxes of donated posters being dropped on campus doorsteps across the state. Some districts didn’t wait: In the Dallas suburb of Frisco, school officials spent about $1,800 to print nearly 5,000 posters, even though schools are required by law to display the Ten Commandments only if the displays are donated. Some schools don’t have posters to put up.
“I’m not evangelizing,” said Dustin Parsons, an eighth-grade U.S. history teacher whose classroom in the small town of Whitesboro has a poster of the Ten Commandments. He said that the exhibition helps him to show the influence of Christianity on the principles of the country’s creation.
“I’m doing it more from the perspective of the historical source of how they drafted the Constitution,” he said.
School districts face a dilemma
The law states that schools must place the donated posters in a “conspicuous location” and requires that the writing be of a size and font that can be seen from any classroom by a person with “average vision.” Screens must also be 16 inches wide by 20 inches high (40 centimeters wide by 50 centimeters high).
South of Austin, the Hays Consolidated Independent School District posted copies of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment legislation along with the state-required Ten Commandments.
“Districts are between a rock and a hard place,” said Elizabeth Beeton, a school board member for the Galveston Independent School District.
The Galveston school board voted to withhold the ordinances until the courts rule on the law’s constitutionality, but then found itself the target of a state lawsuit. This week, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced lawsuits against two more districts he says are violating the law, even though one, the Leander Independent School District, is displaying donated posters.
Donors see the posters as a moral guide
The Texas law was easily passed by the GOP-controlled Legislature, and Republicans including President Donald Trump supported putting the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
In suburban Dallas, Lorne Liechty rallied his family to raise money for Ten Commandments posters to donate to the Rockwall Independent School District.
Lichty, an attorney and Rockwall County commissioner, sees the commandments as central to his Christian faith, the country’s legal system and how society functions.
“These are really good guides to human behavior,” Liechty said. “For the life of me, I don’t know why people would object to any of these principles.
Adriana Bonilla would like to see the posters at her son’s kindergarten near San Antonio.
“It helps establish moral foundations and teaches respect and responsibility,” Bonilla said.
Questions from teachers
Julie Leahy, director of legal services for the nonprofit Texas Classroom Teachers Association, says teachers have asked about the consequences of refusing to display the commandments and whether they can also display posters of other religions.
She said teachers also ask for advice on how to deal with students’ questions.
“Generally speaking, the answer will be that the teacher should return them to the family,” Leahy said.
Even though the Ten Commandments were banned by a court order at Austin High School, where Rachel Preston teaches, she said she and her colleagues are still worried.
“We’re especially concerned about students who don’t identify as Christians, at least in our classrooms, and they’re struggling with how to contextualize it,” Preston said.
Students discuss the posters
When 16-year-old Madison Creed’s middle school in Carthage, a small East Texas town, announced the Ten Commandments last month, she said it briefly became “the buzz of the school” as students debated whether the religious doctrine belonged there.
“Everybody had an opinion about it,” Creed said. “I know from talking to a lot of my peers and classmates, a lot of us don’t agree, but there’s another part of the school that does.”
News also surfaced that the high school band director had resigned because of the law. Johnnie Cotton wrote on Facebook that he “believes very strongly that politics and religion have no place in public schools.”
Creed, who plays in the band, said she understood and agreed with Cotton’s stance and admired him for standing up for his beliefs, despite his ill-timed resignation two weeks before the big contest.
Creed’s mother, Tiffany Meadows, said the announcement of the orders did not bother her because she and her children are Christians, but she was concerned about students of other faiths.
“These are public schools, these are not Christian schools,” Meadows said.
Cervantes, who said she believed the law enforcement violated her students’ First Amendment rights, ended her career at the Fort Worth Academy of Fine Arts this fall by leading her students in a production of Molière’s comedy “The Imaginary Invalid.” Her students gave her a signed cast photo and many said they respected her attitude.
“It seems to me that we’re living in a time where people who can advocate don’t stand up, don’t speak up, and there’s an atmosphere of fear,” Cervantes said. “And I don’t want to be a part of it.”