While picking our daughter up from her public school today, my wife saw an enormous sign (my guess? 8 feet by 8 feet at least) that said "Easter at People Chicago. New Services 9:30 am and 11:15 am." It's on a super-prominent corner (like, 90 percent of kids going to school are going to pass it), and it raised a couple questions for me. I know that churches can rent space at public schools (heck, mine does while we wait for our new building to be built), and, given the budgeting mess that Chicago and Illinois impose on public schools, I don't even remotely begrudge them making money where they can.
But the big Easter services sign on the lawn in front of the school strikes me as constitutionally suspect. Maybe it's totally unobjectionable constitutionally. But if it is objectionable, are there any specific situations in which it wouldn't be? I thought about three possible hypotheticals: (1) The church puts the sign up on Easter Sunday, right before services, and takes it down immediately after (and clearly, kids aren't going to school on Easter Sunday). (2) The church puts the sign up either on Good Friday (Chicago Public Schools were off that day) or on Saturday (when kids aren't required to be at school). They take it down after services. (3) They put it up whenever, but forget to take it down, so it's still there on Monday when kids are required to be back in school. Ultimately, this is an academic question for me. Unless you think there's a really serious problem, in which case I may give a head's-up to the principal (because really, my daughter's school is grossly underfunded and doesn't need that to be compounded by dealing with a lawsuit).
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