FFRF is shocked to discover a Colorado school district has explicitly and unconstitutionally consented to a religious group running an assembly and individually meeting to pray with students during school hours.
The Todd Becker Foundation, a Christian ministry, is scheduled to appear at a Burlington Middle School Assembly on Nov. 28. FFRF has sent a letter to the district asking that it cancel this religious event. In addition, it filed an open records request and received the extremely troubling agreement the district has signed with the group.
The open records request revealed that District Superintendent Tom Satterly signed the agreement openly stating that a bible verse will be included in the assembly and that members of the Todd Becker Foundation would be meeting individually with students, which will “involve them referencing a helpful Bible passage.”
Knowing that FFRF often warns schools against following through with these types of unconstitutional religious assemblies and subsequently opening themselves up to expensive legal liability, the Todd Becker Foundation included in the contract a cancellation fee of $6,215.
The Todd Becker Foundation travels throughout the Midwest putting on assemblies in public schools with the explicit purpose of converting students to its brand of evangelical Christianity. Oftentimes, it infiltrates public schools under the guise of offering a secular presentation, despite its purpose being laid out in no uncertain terms on its website.
“The Foundation’s purpose is to motivate high school students to discover their potentials and ultimately discover themselves by placing their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior,” its website reads.
After receiving the contract from the district, which made explicitly clear The Todd Becker Foundation’s intentions with this assembly, FFRF Legal Fellow Christopher Line sent a follow-up to his first letter.
“This agreement should have raised many red flags and alerted you to the potential legal liability that allowing an outside religious group to proselytize to your students presents,” Line writes in his email to Satterly. “It is alarming that a public school official like yourself would not only allow this religious assembly, but also agree to provisions which prevent you from being able to stop representatives of the Todd Becker Foundation from praying and proselytizing to your students.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is doubling down on its insistence that this event be cancelled.
“This is one of the most egregious violations we have seen,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “To allow the assembly and subsequent individual proselytization meetings to occur would be in direct opposition to students’ constitutional rights.”
If any local parents are concerned about the Todd Becker Foundation’s behavior in Burlington, they are encouraged to contact the Freedom From Religion Foundation at (608) 256-8900 or by filling out a legal complaint on our national organization’s website.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 32,000 members and several chapters across the country, including over 800 members in Colorado and chapters in Denver and Colorado Springs. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.