Across North Carolina, community partnerships with faith groups can play an important role in helping our public schools and students succeed. From school supply drives and afterschool programs to tutoring and affordable building space, churches and houses of worship can offer extra support and resources to their local families and school districts.
As EdNC has previously reported, education and religion both play a big role in people’s lives and decision-making. Across all 100 counties in our state, faith spaces and schools both act as institutional anchors in their communities.
Schools and colleges provide learning, jobs, and community. In 49 of the state’s 100 counties, an entity providing “educational services” is the top employer, EdNC previously reported, and in 46 of those counties, it is the public school system filling that role. Schools like Clinton High School provide food pantries for students; schools in western North Carolina provided mental health support for students and staff once schools could safely open after Hurricane Helene.
Places of worship also help support families and students — like one Elizabeth City church that housed a summer literacy camp, Morganton churches that worked together to support Latina youth, and faith spaces that support communities following hurricanes and other natural disasters — even by helping provide clean water.
“The alignment is just so strong,” Central Carolina Community College’s Meghan Brown — vice president of advancement, operations, and government relations — said of the college’s work with local faith leaders. “And we can imagine possibilities much bigger than we would have been able to without each other.”
If you are a local faith group or local school or district looking to build more partnerships in your community, this toolkit is for you. Read below for a guide to what you need to know about the First Amendment, along with other best practices for faith-based collaborations for public schools, their students, and their communities.
The First Amendment
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution protects many important freedoms, including the freedom to religion.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”First Amendment concerning religion
There are two ideas that protect the freedom of religion, known as the establishment clause and the free exercise clause. While the free exercise clause was designed to protect an individual’s freedom of religion, the establishment clause was designed to protect the separation of church and state. This means the government can’t endorse or promote certain religions over others.
Public schools, which received funding from federal and state governments, must ensure both clauses are protected.
Historically, the freedom of religion has often been tested in public schools. Generally, the Supreme Court’s precedent is that students and teachers are free to practice and express their religion individually as they see fit, but they are not allowed to lead any state-sponsored religious practice.
This has been interpreted to mean that while teachers, for example, can pray privately throughout the day, they can not lead their students in prayer. However, a student-led prayer or religious group can take place on campus, precisely because it is student-led. A 2019 Pew survey of American teens shows some forms of religious expression are relatively common in public schools, including student prayer before sporting events, and students wearing clothing or jewelry with religious symbols.
As more states are testing the limits around religion in public schools, it remains to be seen how the current Supreme Court will interpret freedom of religion protections concerning public schools.
“The Supreme Court has addressed innumerable First Amendment cases about religion and our public schools,” a Find Law article says. “The Court’s interpretation of our First Amendment rights in this environment has also shifted over time. It has been moving increasingly toward accommodating religion. Time will tell if this trend continues.”
In North Carolina, about 77% of adults identify as Christians, according to the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study. That’s compared to 70.6% of adults nationally. Religious North Carolinians of non-Christian faiths make up 3% of the state; 1% are Jewish and less than 1% are Muslim, Buddhist, or Hindu. Fifteen percent identify with no religion in particular, 3% are agnostic, and 2% are atheist.
With more than 10.5 million people living in North Carolina, according to the Census, even 1% of the population is more than 105,500 people — 77% is more than 8,000,000. That’s a lot of people of faith, among them our teachers and students.
Interfaith collaboration
In light of the religious diversity of North Carolina, faith-based partnerships should be as interfaith and nondenominational as possible, according to education and community leaders across the state.
“I always start from the position of, if there are going to be partnerships, especially if they’re going to be more broadly based, that they need to respect people’s individual religious choices,” said Rabbi Andy Koren, senior rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Greensboro. “In other words, no proselytizing — it’s almost like commandment number one of these partnerships.”
Many religious groups want people to join their faith or house of worship, Koren said, which is not a negative thing in of itself. However, if faith groups want to provide educational opportunities and resources primarily as a way of converting people, he said they probably are not the right fit for a partnership with public schools.
“Because we are a minority group in the United States, I think we become particularly sensitive to that,” Koren said.
However, Koren said individual clergy members can provide school administrators with importance perspectives regarding the religious life of their students.
For him, that has meant serving as a resource on antisemitism for leaders at Guilford County Schools, or helping ensure that graduation schedules don’t majorly conflict with the Jewish calendar.
“Graduation usually happens during the time of the year where we have one of those festivals on the Jewish calendar that is really easy to gloss over,” he said. “And so, I’ll be on the phone with the district like a year in advance, saying, ‘Okay, for these particular schools, where you have Jewish concentrations, you’re not going to want to plan graduation for then.’”
Sometimes, Koren also invites school officials to visit his congregation, like when a new superintendent starts. While it takes building good relationships to make events like that happen, Koren said he thinks its an important part of making sure his community is informed.
“We just feel that it’s important for there to be a voice of public education, especially from the highest office in our area, speaking to our community, which is a very civically engaged,” he said.
Other ways Temple Emanuel has partnered with the school district includes serving as a host site for Advanced Placement (AP) exams and sending retired congregants to help with tutoring.
Koren also sees potential for temples and other houses of worship to offer free and stable internet for students, a need that was exacerbated at the start of the pandemic. However, with such partnerships, he thinks its crucial that faith groups respect each individual’s religious freedom.
“I get it that in some parts of our of our state, things are really homogeneous. You know, like, everyone in town is Methodist. Okay, great, but that’s actually probably not true,” Koren said. “And you just have to watch that — knowing that this is the Methodist Church or the Presbyterian Church or even the synagogue — it is not the extension of your local public high school.”
John Parker, director of partnerships and development at the N.C. Council of Churches, said interfaith collaboration is important not only because it protects religious freedom, but because it makes partnerships better.
There’s strength in diverse teams and diverse alliances. Aim to form a partnership that is intergenerational, multi-faith, ecumenical, and folks with a variety of interests from the community and the school families. Working together strengthens a virtuous cycle of involvement, participation, and commitment. How can we identify, leverage, and share our individual and collective gifts and assets in ways that are life-giving, nurture care and creativity, sustain diverse collaborations, and cultivate commitment to place?
