Monroe High School restricts student activity clubs

Published 9:00 pm Sunday, May 7, 2006

MONROE – A policy change at Monroe High School aimed at keeping public funds out of Bible studies is striking a blow to a less controversial student activity.

Next autumn, the Key Club, a popular community service group that has been on campus for 39 years, will no longer be sponsored by the school.

As a result, the club will be stripped of much of its ability to organize, advertise and raise funds for its activities.

“It will not thrive once its status is changed,” said Tom Sorenson, president of the Monroe Kiwanis Club, an Indianapolis-based service organization that sponsors Key Clubs at 5,000 high schools worldwide.

The policy change, approved by school board members in March, divides student clubs into two main groups: those that are related to curriculum and those that aren’t.

Administrators made the change based on legal advice following a 2002 federal appeals court ruling in a Bethel School District case that concerned the rights of a Christian club.

“In essence, you have to draw a line,” said Superintendent Bill Prenevost, noting local levy dollars support such extracurricular activities.

Prenevost has said he will recommend the board formally discuss the idea of a community service requirement at a future meeting, which may provide an opening for sponsorship for Key Club.

School board President Tom MacIntyre said district leaders are sympathetic. “We’ll certainly take a look at what we can do.”

The partitioning is typical of many school districts, which are following an earlier U.S. Supreme Court distinction between curricular and noncurricular groups, said Daniel Montopoli, an attorney with Vandeberg Johnson &Gandara in Tacoma.

“School districts across the country are struggling with this. It’s a very complex area of law,” Montopoli said.

Along with the Key Club, the Multicultural Club and Gay Straight Alliance also will lose Monroe High School sponsorship. All groups still can meet on campus before and after school.

Losing sponsorship means the clubs:

* Can no longer tap Associated Student Body funds for such costs as transportation to off-campus events;

* Won’t be provided a faculty adviser;

* Will be restricted to certain areas for advertising; and

* Cannot hold fundraisers on campus.

“The biggest issue for these clubs is that without a volunteer adviser, they will literally fall apart,” said senior Martha Burwell, 18, Monroe’s ASB president.

Groups can petition the Associated Student Body for recognition, though they still would face many restrictions.

Burwell said an active group such as Key Club, which performs dozens of service projects each semester, would likely find it tedious to go to the ASB board repeatedly for permission to hold each event.

Multicultural Club president Andrianna Petrushka, 15, a junior, said it’s been hard enough to raise money and plan activities with her club’s five members.

“I just don’t think anyone will want to come to club. I don’t think it will survive,” she said.

The timing is troubling for the Gay Straight Alliance, which has existed informally on campus for several years but this year was pursuing formal recognition.

It had conditional approval from the school last fall and was waiting to appear before the school board for district approval.

“I feel they’re pushing us under the table,” said co-president Hillary Liebman, 18, a senior.

The club has drawn opposition from some Monroe residents, who have attended past school board meetings to protest a mission that promotes tolerance of homosexuality.

Prenevost said the timing of the policy change “gives the appearance that the two were related, but they weren’t.”

At a school board meeting last week, several Kiwanis members asked that community service hours be added as a graduation requirement, something that could bring Key Club back into the school-sponsored fold.

Key Club members say their activities, such as carving pumpkins for hospital patients and holding blood drives twice a year, epitomize the school district’s educational mission.

“I can graduate high school with my shiny new diploma and freshly ironed cap and gown, logarithms memorized, know all the names and birth dates of the presidents, and can use parenthetical documentation perfectly,” said junior Shayla Behling, 16.

“But if I’m not an active member of society, what good are these skills?”

Reporter Melissa Slager: 425-339-3465 or mslager@heraldnet.com.