WP: Aid ($1M) to Christian School In Alaska Spurs Lawsuit

[DeepModem Mom]

Aid to Christian School In Alaska Spurs Lawsuit

By Brian Faler
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, May 9, 2005; Page A21


There are those who complain that Congress does not care about the concerns of the little guy. But those people do not attend Alaska Christian College.

The school, founded five years ago and affiliated with the Evangelical Covenant Church, has 37 students. It is not accredited and does not grant degrees. It offers, instead, certificates in biblical studies at the end of a student's first year and certificates in biblical and general studies to those who complete a second. Over the past two years, Congress has given the school more than $1 million.

That amounts to a significant chunk of the school's annual operating budget, although its president declined to say exactly how much. It is also an unusually large amount of federal aid for a school its size, some outside education policy experts said. It has proved enough to attract critics -- more critics, perhaps, than the school has students -- who complain that the school is a thoroughly religious institution that, by law, is not eligible to receive the money.

The Anchorage Daily News criticized the appropriations last year, writing in an editorial that "Alaska's congressional delegation might just as well have put a $1 million check in the church collection plate." The American Civil Liberties Union is looking into the case. But the school's most important critics these days are 3,600 miles away in Wisconsin, where the Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation is suing the Education Department to rescind the funding.

The advocacy group, which supports maintaining a strict separation between church and state, contends in a lawsuit filed last month that the subsidies amount to an unconstitutional government endorsement of a religion. The government is allowed to give money to schools with religious affiliations. But the money must be used for secular purposes -- which, the group contends, the Alaska school does not have....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/08/AR2005050800780.html