An addition was made in each classroom at Kingwood Park as Humble ISD works to comply with the state law requiring The Ten Commandments to be visible.
The administration team first received news about Texas Senate Bill 10 at a district leadership meeting in July.
Districts are not required to buy the posters, but they are required to hang donated posters. Throughout the school year, posters have quietly gone up in schools around Humble ISD as donations arrived. Kingwood Park received their posters in January.
The law required the donated posters to be visible from all spaces in the classroom from an average eyesight, and must only have The Ten Commandments on them. The posters are also required to be at minimum 16 by 20 inches.
Some districts across Texas are part of a constitutional lawsuit surrounding the bill and have been ordered by judges to not hang the posters. Humble ISD is not part of that lawsuit.
Even though a similar law in Louisiana has been ruled unconstitutional, Kingwood Park principal Wes Solomon said the reception of the posters at Kingwood Park has been quiet.
“We have not heard anything, positive or negative,” Solomon said.
For students, the new addition to classrooms on Jan. 22 did not go unnoticed.
Junior Darcy Gordon said The Ten Commandments is a good thing to live by, but does not agree it should be in classrooms.
“The law shows the suppressing of other religions,” Gordon said. “It is a very good ideology to have, but if somebody put up the commandments of the Muslim Quran, everybody would be mad.”
For other students, seeing the commandments in class was a great thing.
“I think it’s a good law, especially because I’m Christian,” sophomore Matthew Tedrick said. “A lot of people have talked about how the church and the state need to be separate, but I think it’s a great thing that God’s word is in the classroom.”
Tedrick said Christianity is not trying to harm students at the school and there is no bad intent to force kids to convert to the religion.
“For the people who are saying it is being forced on them, well you don’t have to read it,” Tedrick said. “A lot of times, especially on social media, inappropriate things get posted for people to see, but nobody says anything about that.”
As students continue to debate the necessity of the law, courts will ultimately decide the future of Texas Senate Bill 10.
“It is a great set of rules to have, but I don’t want it to be pushed on people,” Gordon said.
