Publicly funded charter school in Nampa to use Bible as textbook

NAMPA -- In a former carpet and lighting store turned church, the founders of a new charter school sit before a row of pews and outline the curriculum they'll introduce to more than 550 students in August.

The first sixth-graders to enroll at Nampa Classical Academy will begin learning Latin. The ninth-graders will delve into the history of Western civilization, with the Bible included as a primary source of teaching material.

The Bible will be taught for its literary and historic qualities, as part of a secular education program, headmaster Val Bush said.

"Some people are rather bigoted; they say you can use everything but that," Bush said. "We say, 'Why?' "

The academy is slated to become the third-largest public charter school in Idaho when it opens this fall.

Portable classrooms on a 17-acre property across town from the New Heart Fellowship Church, where the school is temporarily renting office space, will hold 557 students in kindergarten through ninth grade.

Two months before classes begin, three people have complained to the state that the public charter school appears rooted in Christian beliefs, academy founder Isaac Moffett said.

"We are not a religious school," he said, and students will not receive religious instruction.

Nampa Classical Academy will offer an education grounded in grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, Moffett said.

Moffett, 36, attended the College of Southern Idaho and Boise State University before completing a social and behavioral science degree two years ago at a satellite campus of George Fox University, a private Oregon-based Christian school. He finished his teaching degree at Lewis-Clark State College in northern Idaho last year.

"My philosophy did not match anything in traditional education today," said Moffett, who believes the idea that his school is religious stems from the core values the school has adopted. Those values, he said, include character, charity, civility, destiny, discipline, excellence, industry, integrity, service, loyalty, originality and patriotism.

"I've had people say they're Christian values. They're not, they're Western values," Moffett said.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 1963 ruling that banned ceremonial school Bible readings, said "the Bible is worthy of study for its literary and historic qualities" so long as material is "presented objectively as part of a secular program of education."

Students at the Nampa academy will read from a New International Version Bible that includes footnotes denoting cultural and archaeology discoveries, Moffett said. When studying literature, they will read from the King James version.

Bill Goesling, chairman of the Idaho Public Charter School Commission, said the Bible wasn't discussed when the academy was approved last year.

"I don't remember it coming up. Had it been known, I think we would have spent a little bit more time on it," Goesling said. "If it's being used as a whole class, and it becomes a Bible study, than we are going to have a problem."