A school district poster that promotes Native values that the district wants to instill in students does not violate the U.S. Constitution, a Ketchikan judge has ruled.
Two parents wanted the poster taken down from the walls of the Ketchikan Charter School because, among the values on the poster is “Reverence for Our Creator,” which pushes a religious perspective.
Students at the school are subject to a behavior modification program based on how well they expresse the Native values — values that were determined by Southeast Alaska Native leaders two decades ago.
The poster refers to things like having pride in clans, being strong, having courage, and being good stewards of the land and sea.
Judge Katherine Lybrand said that the parents, one of whom is a teacher at the school, didn’t convince her that “Reverence for Our Creator” is a religious statement. She added that even if the statement was religious, it didn’t force behavior on anyone.
“The mere display of the posters around the District’s schools does not foster excessive entanglement or coerce students to believe a certain thing (and in fact there was no testimony that any student has felt coerced in any way),” Lybrand wrote, and that the poster promoting values is “more akin to reciting the pledge of allegiance than the posting of the Ten Commandments because the poster as a whole demonstrates that its purpose is to promote place-based learning and cross-cultural understanding, not to promote a religious belief.”
