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Kent (WA) School District has made a decision-- "a policy change," they call it---to cancel the annual high school band trip to Victoria (BC).
The band trip has been a tradition for nearly 20 years---kids look forward to it as a high school high light.
The school district says they made the decision in the name of fairness.
A good number of parents and students say the decision is anything but fair.
What's going on?
Sunday is Mother's Day. I am grateful for a godly mother. She is with the Lord, but her influence continues.
I am also grateful for a beautiful, godly wife---the mother of our children. Marjorie steadfastly mothered our children and taught them the ways of the Lord---sometimes alone while I was in the jungles and dark corners of the earth preaching the gospel and establishing churches. Without an iPhone or internet to stay in touch.
Each of our adult children serve the Lord. They are now married, and have raised, or are raising their own children. They have modeled Christ to their own children in the same way He was modeled to them.
Thank you, Marjorie. Happy Mother's Day.
I would encourage you to visit 31daily.com, an international web site focused on the family and the home---written and created by Stephanie, one of our daughters.
Kent School District decided during a board meeting that all international trips were canceled because border agents might detain and deport illegal alien students on the return trip from a foreign country.
Chris Loftis, a Kent administrator, told KOMO News, "It comes down to one word-- Equality. We recognize when we were able to look at things, that for years we've been offering these trips, but by definition our students who are undocumented can't cross the border."
Why should kids and families who are law abiding citizens be penalized in a so-called act of "fairness" because others have chosen not to obey the law?
Loftis said, "Sometimes as a culture and a society we have to sacrifice as individuals for the greater good, and we feel that's the case here."
What is the basis for deciding what is "the greater good?"
The board's action brings to an end a nearly 20 year tradition at Kent.
Every year the band marches in the parade in Victoria and gives a concert later in the day.
This decision involves more than one trip, but the annual band trip to Victoria hit a lot of students and their parents pretty hard. Students, parents and the folks who host them in Victoria have been planning, preparing, and practicing for this all year.
Kentlake junior Megan Monahan, who has traveled to Victoria twice, told the Seattle Times, "I was dumbstruck. I couldn't even comprehend that we weren't going."
Other students, including sophomore Braden Ross, said they wished they would have been told earlier.
Ross told the Times, "To be honest, it's more than just a bit heartbreaking. We have put months into planning and fundraising, just to be told a few weeks before the trip that we can't go. It we had been alerted earlier, maybe we could have come up with some kind of solution, or maybe made plans to go to another event. But since it's on such short notice, the odds of finding an alternative are very slim."
Actually, I'm told the district has arranged an alternative. The band is to participate in the Lilac Festival in Spokane.
Much can be taken from this episode.
It is clear, at least to me, that the school district has chosen to be "more fair" with the illegals than with the citizens. Progressive ideology always leads to subjective choices as to what is "fair," or what is "moral," or what is "right" based on nothing other than someone's personal belief. No higher authority is considered.
This school district (and it is not alone in doing so) has taken it upon itself to decide which laws to uphold, and which laws not to disobey.
When we become a law unto ourselves it gets complicated. It also destroys a culture.
Why could they not simply leave the illegals at home? Jordyn Mastroff, a junior, questioned "whether it was fair to have left students with financial issues behind in the past, yet adopt an all-or-nothing policy now."
The Tacoma Tribune also seems to be questioning the "fairness" of the school board decision: "Another student exchange program to Japan was also axed by the district. Such trips are not mandatory---no illegal alien is forced to go on them and risk getting detained at the border. And the school district refuses to track or make note of which students are illegal aliens to avoid stigmatizing them."
The school administrators explained if they were to exercise that kind of "fairness" it may expose which students are illegal and which are not. That wouldn't be fair.
Since they are willfully complicit in refusing to obey our country's immigration laws, that kind of thinking would follow.
This kind of thinking is an extension of former President Obama's M.O.
Ted Cruz once said, "I believe we should follow law, even a law I disagree with. It's one of the real differences---if you look at President Obama and the lawlessness, if he disagrees with a law he simply refuses to follow it or claims the authority to unilaterally change it."
We are witnessing Barack Obama's lengthening legacy of lawlessness.
Louis XIV infamously said, "It is legal because I wish it."
And in II Thessolonians 2:8-10, the Apostle Paul characterizes the Anti-Christ as a man of "lawlessness."
A final thought.
School Board President Karen DeBruler told the Times, "It's not fair for them not to go. But things are changing on a very unprecedented basis. Allowing some students to go would mean that the students who couldn't go would be exposed as being undocumented."
Is the school board attempting to blame President Trump for the consequences of their decision to not abide by the law?
Chris Lofftis, the district's director of communications told the Seattle Times, the "sometimes confusing messaging" from President Donald Trump's administration regarding border enforcement raised questions about whether all students slated to go on those trips would be allowed to return to the US, especially if they lacked adequate documentation of legal US residency.
He said, "You cannot go on a field trip with 60 kids and come back with 59."
Neither can school administrators model selective obedience to the laws of our land, while expecting kids to obey the rules of the school---unless they personally believe them to be acceptable rules.
Bestselling author David McCullough, in his book "John Adams," quotes our second president saying:
"We are a nation of laws and not of men."
Himself a Christian, he understood the fallen nature of man.
Founding Father, president, husband and father, John Adams knew full well where lawlessness can lead---causing him to say to his wife Abigail----the mother of his children: "We live, my dear soul, in an age of trial. What will be the consequence, I know not."
We too live in our age of trial.
Be Informed. Be Vigilant. Be Discerning. Be Prayerful.