Oklahoma’s new public faculties superintendent introduced Wednesday he’s rescinding a mandate from his predecessor that pressured faculties to put Bibles in lecture rooms and incorporate the guide into lesson plans for college students.
Superintendent Lindel Fields mentioned in an announcement he has “no plans to distribute Bibles or a Biblical character training curriculum in lecture rooms.”
The directive final 12 months from former Superintendent Ryan Walters drew fast condemnation from civil rights teams and prompted a lawsuit from a bunch of oldsters, academics, and non secular leaders that’s pending earlier than the Oklahoma Supreme Court docket. It was to have utilized to college students in grades 5 via 12.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Fields to the superintendent’s submit after Walters resigned final month to take a job within the personal sector.
Jacki Phelps, an legal professional for the Oklahoma State Division of Training, mentioned she intends to inform the courtroom of the company’s plan to rescind the mandate and search a movement to dismiss the lawsuit.
Attorneys representing the plaintiffs within the lawsuit mentioned they have been inspired by Fields’ choice and plan to debate subsequent steps with their shoppers.
“The makes an attempt to advertise faith within the classroom and the abuses of energy that the Oklahoma State Division of Training engaged in beneath Walters’ tenure ought to by no means occur in Oklahoma or anyplace in the USA once more,” the attorneys mentioned in an announcement.
Many colleges districts throughout the state had determined to not comply with the Bible mandate.
A spokeswoman for the state training division, Tara Thompson, mentioned Fields believes the choice on whether or not the Bible needs to be integrated into classroom instruction is one finest left as much as particular person districts and that spending cash on Bibles shouldn’t be the most effective use of taxpayer assets.
Walters in March had introduced plans to workforce up with nation music singer Lee Greenwood searching for donations to get Bibles into lecture rooms after a legislative panel rejected his $3 million request to fund the trouble.
Walters, a far-right Republican, made preventing “woke ideology”, banning sure books from college libraries, and eliminating “radical leftists” who he claims have been indoctrinating youngsters in lecture rooms a focus of his administration. Since his election in 2020, he imposed quite a lot of mandates on public faculties and labored to develop new social research requirements for Ok-12 public college college students that included educating about conspiracy theories associated to the 2020 presidential election. These requirements have been placed on maintain whereas a lawsuit difficult them strikes ahead.
Thompson mentioned the company plans to evaluation all of Walters’ edicts, together with a requirement that candidates from trainer jobs coming from California and New York take an ideology examination, to find out if these might also be rescinded.
“We have to evaluation all of these mandates and supply readability to varsities transferring ahead,” she mentioned.
