The Commercial Appeal reports:
Reached at her home late Tuesday, Dr. Patricia Kilzer, 45, who has taught chemistry and advanced placement chemistry for two years, said school administrators have refused to give her a reason why her contract is not being renewed.
Kilzer said she would have needed to teach another year to gain tenure. “I got very good evaluations and I’m highly qualified,” she said, adding she believes it may be because she agreed to be the ACLU faculty adviser when students asked her. “Since this is a public school, I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
While Kilzer said she heard a rumor on May 11 about her contract not being renewed, school officials met with her May 12. “That’s when they told me.”
Is it a coincidence that this was the same day that the ACLU faxed a letter to the school to explain how official prayers would be unconstitutional — a letter which was prompted by a complaint filed by students in the ACLU club? Is it a coincidence that now the ACLU club has no faculty advisor and therefore can no longer exist until a new one is found — and that finding a new one may be difficult given what happened to the last adviser?
This isn’t the first religious controversy for Kilzer:
Before the school prayer issue, Kilzer said her students had asked Marshall not to use the school’s broadcasting system to talk about Jesus and religion.
Since the prayer controversy, Kilzer said, “People are blaming me.” Other teachers either won’t make eye contact in the hallways or turn their heads when she passes by, she said.
When asked if there were any lessons learned from this, Kilzer paused. “Lessons learned? I’m a Christian myself. People say I am a God-hater. I simply believe in the Constitution and equality. I am very tolerant of other religions and that to me is what we’re supposed to be.”
I received an email from a student in Munford who explained that the ACLU club was only formed in the past year and focused on church/state separation issues like school prayer and the practice in Munford to give religious talks during the morning announcements. The email continues:
Before all of this graduation prayer controversy, we were already controversial for our involvement in canceling the official prayer at football games, and for stopping our principal from giving religious talks over the announcements. So, we already had many people who would like to see us gone. We, of course, cannot be a school club without a faculty adviser. Their target was our adviser.
Our club met once a week after school for about 30 minutes, and we discussed business. It was during one of those meetings that one of our seniors expressed concern for the official prayer at graduation. Next meeting, we got some forms and filed the complaint. This was in late April. Next thing we knew, our adviser loses her job, and the school complies with the ACLU's requests. All in the same 24 hours.
There is also evidently a rumor going around that one of the seniors involved with the club was threatened with violence. I’m hesitant to repeat rumors like this, and I must caution you that I have no evidence that any threats were made. However, I have found threats and actual violence to be very common in situations like this, so a report about a threat in this case sounds completely credible.
It’s possible hat Kilzer’s firing had absolutely nothing to do with the complaint filed with the ACLU, but as I said the circumstances here are very suspicious. I’m sure that some people thought that the original complaint was made over an ultimately trivial matter — who really cares if someone says a prayer during graduation? If complaining about it is enough to get someone fired, though, then it’s not a trivial matter at all.
Official prayers should not be included precisely because of things like this: people start expressing a willingness to use force or even violence to preserve their unjust privileges and their special access to government power. This sort of tribalism or territoriality in the name of religion is just what the authors of the Constitution wanted to prevent by specifically separating civil from ecclesiastical authority. Civil leaders have no authority to dictate prayers while ecclesiastical leaders have no authority to dictate civil matters. When the two intermingle, though, people become willing to fight to preserve their religion’s access to political power.
That's wrong.
Christian & Religious Privilege:
Religion in Public Schools: