DeVos allows religious groups to provide taxpayer-funded services in private schools

WASHINGTON - Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced Monday she would no longer enforce a rule that bars religious institutions from providing certain taxpayer-funded services in private schools, saying the restriction ran afoul of a recent high-court decision.

Under the federal education law, private schools are entitled to many of the federally funded services that public schools receive, particularly if they educate children from low-income households or English-language learners. The rules, called equitable-services provisions, mean that public schools pay for professional development for private school teachers, or send a member of their own staff to provide reading help to a struggling child who is eligible for extra help.

Oftentimes, school districts will contract with third parties to provide the services. But the rules barred school districts from contracting with religious institutions in these circumstances.

Sister Dale McDonald, director of public policy for the National Catholic Educational Association, said it meant that school districts could not contract with faculty members at a religiously affiliated university, for example, to provide professional development to private-school teachers, even if the services were secular.

DeVos said in an announcement that the prohibition was no longer enforceable because of a 2017 Supreme Court decision in which the court ruled that religious organizations could not be excluded from state programs if the organizations have secular intent. The court sided with Trinity Lutheran, a Missouri Synod church in Columbia, Missouri, that sought to participate in a state program to resurface its playground for its preschoolers.

"The Trinity Lutheran decision reaffirmed the long-understood intent of the First Amendment to not restrict the free exercise of religion," DeVos said in a news release. "Those seeking to provide high-quality educational services to students and teachers should not be discriminated against simply based on the religious character of their organization."

While school districts are now open to contract with religious organizations, the services they provide must be "secular, neutral and non-ideological." The service providers also cannot be affiliated with the private schools they are serving.