Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila has an incredible opportunity to recommit to serving all of God’s children in the Catholic schools under the umbrella of the Archdiocese of Denver.
On Oct. 1, a federal appeals court told two Catholic preschools in the Denver diocese that they could not refuse to enroll students because of the students’ sexuality or the sexuality of their parents and still receive state funding.
The ruling is in accordance with long-standing practices – churches can either accept state and federal funding for their education programs or they can discriminate based on sexual orientation, race, disability, military status, gender identity or religion. Private schools cannot do both.
Aquila can choose to appeal the ruling, or he could choose to pull Catholic schools from Colorado’s highly successful universal free preschool program.
But the gracious and kind path forward is to begin enrolling any and every student who seeks admission to a Catholic preschool until the school reaches capacity.
We’d like to remind Aquila and the leaders of St. Mary Catholic Virtue School in Littleton and Wellspring Catholic Academy in Lakewood that every student has a right to an education in this state, and if state dollars are being used in a program, it must be open to everyone. We’d also like to remind them that the love that happens in a student’s home has no impact on other members of the church or other students in the classroom.
In the rare event that a preschool student is already expressing their sexuality or their gender identity in public, those topics rarely, if ever, come up in a preschool setting. If they do, adult teachers are adept at redirecting the conversation to something that is more age-appropriate. Or if the teachers feel compelled to express their religious beliefs on the issue, they are free to do so in a private school, and the parents can then decide if that is the right environment for their child.
We do not buy the accusation in the lawsuit that the universal preschool program is an attack on religious education. In fact, the beauty of the universal preschool program is that it includes religious schools, opening the doors of some of the best schools in the state to low-income and middle-class Coloradans who couldn’t otherwise afford tuition.
We are grateful that Catholic schools want to participate in the state-funded program that covers tuition for a limited number of hours per student. The state will be better for having these excellent schools open to everyone, and we know that some private preschools have chosen not to participate in a program that can be complicated and messy, especially in the chaotic first year of implementation.
In their ruling, the federal judges on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals found that Colorado’s program “went to great effort to be welcoming and inclusive of faith-based preschools’ participation.”
Colorado’s preschool program does not prohibit schools from teaching religion in their classrooms, which could mean a teacher telling a student that the teacher believes their parents are living a life out of accordance with the teachings in the Bible.
The state learned an important lesson after losing an anti-discrimination case before the U.S. Supreme Court because the justices found evidence that a Christian man had faced hostility based on his religion. Colorado cannot be so zealous in its effort to prevent discrimination that it also discriminates based on religion. A balance must be met, and the universal preschool program has found that balance.
Study after study has shown that American children benefit extraordinarily from quality preschool. Unfortunately, very few states have included pre-school funding in their public schools. Colorado’s universal preschool system, funded by a tax on nicotine products, is groundbreaking and should help our students compete on an international level. Universal free preschool is also essential to help end the stubborn gap in learning that exists between rich and poor students in America.
Catholic schools in this state can step up in an important way to love and educate all children.
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