Public spaces, private interests, religion and schools version part 376

On occasion, K-12 school systems can back into reasonable ways of negotiating church-state boundaries. In Collier County, Florida, as a result of conflict between the schools and a group wanting to pass out bibles, the Collier schools established a day that community groups could collectively present pamphlets, literature, etc. for students. The two conditions for participating in Religious Freedom Day:

1. Any group can put out literature–churches, synagogues, mosques, atheists, the ACLU, etc. 
2. The tables have material for students to grab if they want, but there is no representative of the group to harangue or harass students. (A representative of a group can walk by the table once or twice during the day and restock.) 

This seems to me a very reasonable way of making material available in a non-pressurized environment, with access to any group, and in a way that avoids the artificial sanitation of public spaces. When I was in high school, there was an evangelical group who was passing out Bibles to students until a parent complained to the principal. According to a report I heard, here's roughly the content of the conversation (with names changed):

Sarah, the men are harmless. They're just passing out Bibles, and no student has to take one.

Evangelism doesn't belong in a public school, John.

I don't see any way that I can tell them to go away legally.

Fine. I'll call the local Hare Krishna temple and next week you'll have people hawking Bibles and others chanting.

All right, Sarah, I'll tell them to go away.

The mother in this case knew exactly how to push a principal's button, since many administrators fear public controversy more than almost anything else. But I really wish the principal of my high school had stuck to his guns. There's a Hare Krishna temple about 10 miles away from that school, and I think it would have been a great education for my classmates in 1980. The literature tables in Collier are a better way to organize awareness of community religious (and non-religious!) groups for the long term, but what better reward for coming to your boring old school than to get off the bus (or out of cars) to see evangelists with their green Bibles and Hare Krishnas in their robes, in the same space.