Schools chief backs board leader

Religious views of Martin come scrutiny

CHRIS GARIFO
Staff Writer

Arizona Board of Education President Janet Martin takes a lot of heat for pushing her Christian views, but education officials, including state Superintendent of Public Instruction Lisa Graham Keegan, say that criticism is unfair.

Rabbi Robert L. Kravitz, executive director of the American Jewish Committee in Phoenix, is among those critical of Martin for what he calls "her connections with the radical Christian political movement."

"The concerns are that she would reflect a particularly conservative, Christian agenda in a public forum," Kravitz says about a Feb. 15 speech Martin gave to the We Hold These Truths organization. "She's told people that that's what she wants to do. She's also told people that she would separate herself from her personal beliefs and just deal with the public's best interests, but her votes have not reflected that."

Keegan, however, says Martin does not "enforce her own religious views on others."

"I would consider Janet one of the strongest advocates for public education in Arizona," Keegan says.

Keegan admits that Martin has strong personal opinions, but that once the board has decided an issue, she fully supports that decision.

"(Martin) gets a terrible rap for her honesty and being willing to espouse her own personal views, which she does with great courage," Keegan adds. "People take segments of what Janet says in her own personal views and they attempt to scare everybody into believing that she applies those into public policy by herself, tries to sneak them in. She never does. She is the most honest person I have ever worked with."

Keegan says she and Martin, for example, disagreed strongly over the issue of evolution while preparing the state's standards for science education, with Martin taking "a religious view" on whether evolution should be taught.

Martin lost that argument and, Keegan says, "is a strong advocate for the standards and, quite frankly, takes a great deal of abuse from her own community for doing it."

Fellow education board member Todd Bankofier echoes Keegan's support.

"(Martin) has been a good board member," he says. "She's advocated for her position on numerous issues that maybe we haven't agreed on, but there has been no religious advocacy on her part on the board since I've been there."

Martin was appointed to the board in 1996 by then Gov. Fife Symington to fill another member's term. In 1997, Gov. Jane Dee Hull appointed Martin to a full four-year term on the board and, in January, the board voted her president.

Martin says she opposes teaching religious "doctrine" in public schools.

"I really think (religion) has to remain a fairly neutral item as far as doctrine goes," she says.

Martin says, however, that educators made a mistake beginning in the 1960s when they tried to eliminate religion from the classroom in response to U.S. Supreme Court rulings on the separation of church and state.

"I think (educators), instead of saying how close can we get to teaching the heart of faith-based values, they ran in the other direction and said let's not even talk about values, maybe there aren't any such thing as values."

Martin says public schools should at least be able to teach the importance religion has had in the nation's and Arizona's creation and development.

While she says she hopes God has a place inside the classroom, she admits she's not sure exactly what that place is.

"Certainly a moment of silence at the beginning of the day, certainly a review of the historical documents in the course of seeing what has put together our country, not to sanitize the importance of faith and religion in our great heroes," she suggests. "Certainly the faith of the people who were able to withstand the horrors of Nazi concentration camps, something other than just human tenacity, would carry those people through. I mean, they had a terrific faith in God and to not give credit to that source of strength I think is wrong."

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