Some state officials are questioning a Mesa charter school's decision to run ads promising young Mormons a school tailored to them.
Officials involved with Arizona's publicly funded charter school industry say Life School crossed the line between church and state."I think it's horrible," said Mary Gifford, a member of the Arizona State Board of Charter Schools and one of the movement's strongest supporters.
"This is one of the clearest violations of church-state separation that I've ever seen," said David Berliner, dean of Arizona State University's College of Education.
"It's just another example of charter schools running amok. It's deplorable," added state Sen. Mary Hartley, D-Phoenix.
But Life School Director Jim Alverson maintains that, "We're not trying to do a secret Mormon thing."
Life School, a taxpayer-supported institution with plans to sprout dozens of satellite campuses, is advertising "10 Reasons LDS Parents Should Choose Life School."
Life School students may select an LDS "mentor. . . . Your child will be with this master teacher every day for several years if you wish."
The school provides preparation for church-affiliated Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, and Ricks Junior College in Rexburg, Idaho.
LDS seminary attendance is encouraged. According to the ad, "all of our sites are next door to an LDS seminary and our LDS students are encouraged to attend."
Gifford said the state charter school board has received complaints about other charter schools doing something similar to what Life School is doing, though this was the first over Life School's recruiting LDS students. "The federal government has specifically told us not to market to sects of people, that it's a violation of civil rights," she said.
Although charter schools generally enjoy autonomy from most public-school bureaucracies, the publicly funded, privately run schools are required to follow laws on separation of church and state.
Alverson, who is LDS, defended the ad, which ran in the Beehive, a Mormon-affiliated newspaper based in Mesa.
"As long as everyone is clear we can't in any way do anything that even approaches religion, I don't see what's wrong with what we're doing," he said.
Arizona's top education officials said little about the Life School ad. Lisa Graham Keegan, state superintendent of public instruction, said through a spokeswoman that she would have no comment because she had not spoken yet with Alverson.
A spokeswoman for the state attorney general told the Mesa Tribune, a newspaper serving suburban Phoenix, that the office is "looking into the matter."
This isn't the first time a charter school has come under fire for blurring the line between church and state.
The state investigated complaints that Scottsdale Horizons School was teaching Scientology and that EcoTech Agricultural School in Chandler was recruiting only Muslims. In both cases, the complaints were unfounded.