More extreme than these cases, consider a school that the late religious leader David Koresch might have sponsored. We have guarded the freedom of religious beliefs as private and personal matters and have allowed them to stand as long as people are not coerced or harmed. But again, guarding this freedom is a different point from whether we, as citizens committed to the democratic ideals of Constitutional guarantees. It often has been said that schools should remain value neutral. Currently, funds can be withheld from schools if they do not meet certain guarantees of gender equity, for example.
Administrators respond to their own religious doctrine and leadership.
If a parochial school were to take such an action, we can hold our public school officials accountable. Democracy may be messy, but it holds public accountability as its final check on potential abuses. An important value of public schooling is that it is one of the few places remaining where diverse people come together by virtue of where they live, rather than by self choice or selection. A public school is a conglomeration of many different folks and we hope, a diverse array of ethnicity's, gender, religions, and beliefs. It is one of the few places left where we can learn to get along with folks who may not be quite like us, either in belief or appearance or action.