Court Upholds Conduct of School Classes in Church and Synagogue

Officials of Ramapo 2 School District, who won a court rejection of a petition to bar the use of facilities of a synagogue and church for public school pupils, indicated today that those facilities had been used for that purpose since the new school year began.

A group of 25 parents filed a petition in White Plains with State Supreme Court Justice John Dillon, contending plans to use facilities of Temple Beth El and St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church for an overflow enrollment of public school pupils was unconstitutional in violating of the church-state separation clause. The petition asked that the Rockland County school board be banned from using the facilities of the two Spring Valley religious institutions. On Monday, Justice Dillon rejected the petition.

Leo Pfeffer, counsel for the American Jewish Congress, appeared before Justice Dillon on behalf of the objecting parents. He said that sending children to buildings where the “atmosphere was religious” violated the “sincere, honest religious feelings” of the petitioning parents. David Greenberg, school district attorney, replied that the move was forced by a huge school age population and expansion, for which the district was building two elementary schools and a high school. Meanwhile, he told the court, classes has to be held somewhere.

School district officials said, after the ruling, that they had been using the classroom facilities since the start of the school year on September 7. They also have been using an abandoned military base near Spring Valley for about half of the 800 additional pupils this year, for whom facilities did not exist in the district’s public schools. The other 400 are attending classes in the church and the synagogue.