San Diego Elementary School Changes Accommodations for Muslim Students

According to yesterday's San Diego Union-Tribune, a California elementary school has backed off to some extent from accommodations it had made for a group of 100 Somali Muslim students who had enrolled last year after their charter school closed. San Diego's Carver Elementary School created single-gender classes and gave students a daily 15-minute break for voluntary prayers. (See prior posting.) News of the accommodations, however, generated national, and even international, controversy. (See Wall of Separation blog.) For this fall, the school has eliminated its single-gender classes (even though they are permissible under federal law) and has reconfigured its lunch periods so that the regular lunch period for older students will fall at the time of required Muslim prayers. That way, older students—the ones required under Muslim law to pray regularly—can use their regular lunch period for prayer, as can students of any other religion as well.