A Revere private school is asking Danvers for permission to open a K-12 campus for 70 students from across Massachusetts, and the School Committee found that its instruction met the public-school standard and voted to approve its academic application. That approval is not a building.
That is the account in Lance Reynolds’s Nov. 12 Boston Herald report. The Islamic Education School, based in Revere, sought the committee’s approval. Superintendent Dan Bauer said the school approached him in October and had purchased property in Danvers for an additional school. The Herald also reports that Massachusetts law keeps a school committee from withholding that approval because of religious instruction.
The test on the books
The academic piece of the statute is plainer than the fight around it. Chapter 76, Section 1 says a school committee shall approve a private school when satisfied that instruction in the studies required by law equals, in thoroughness, efficiency and progress, the instruction in that town’s public schools. The text continues beyond “but shall not withhold” and includes further statutory provisions, including a prohibition on withholding approval because of religious teaching and transportation provisions.
Principal Rawan Chaaban asked the committee to judge the school by the same academic standards applied to every private school in Massachusetts. She said some families want their children’s education to include their faith, and that TIES wants to be an option for Muslim families in the way private schools already serve other religions. By her count, Danvers already has about seven private schools, including Catholic and Christian ones. State regulations, the Herald reports, required the committee to use the same review process here…