PARK RAPIDS — A former Park Rapids School Board member is offering to donate a stone Ten Commandments monument to be placed outside the high school.
Dennis Dodge presented his idea to the Board on Monday, May 20, the Park Rapids Enterprise first reported. “We must put God back into our educational system before we lose our children and this great nation," would be inscribed on the back of the proposed monument.
Dodge, 74, served on the Park Rapids School Board for 32 years before he was defeated in the 2022 election. His proposal would place the Ten Commandments monument outside the Park Rapids High School in September 2025, when landscaping is completed. The school is under renovation as part of a $51.6 million referendum voters approved in 2021.
In a Wednesday phone interview with KAXE, Dodge reasoned that a 2005 Supreme Court decision that held up the Ten Commandments at the Texas State Capitol permits similar monuments on public property.
“I've been getting a lot of pushback — from people around the state, in fact — about the Ten Commandments ... ‘If you put that there, we're going to pull kids out of school,’ or stuff like that,” Dodge said. “And I'm trying to understand — what is so offensive with God's words? Why is there such a problem?
“We're not pushing the religion, we're not putting it into school books or anything. ... This is a donation, a plaque or a monument, for people to read or look at if they want.”
Dodge also read the letter he presented to the Park Rapids School Board when offering the donation.
“‘Our society has lost its moral compass, its values, its respect for each other,’” Dodge read. “‘ ... Even if we can save one child from Satan's grasp, it is worth every cent that we spend on this donation because God's children are priceless.’”
Chair Sherry Safratowich stated at the meeting that the Board will need time to discuss the proposed donation before deciding, inviting input from community members, according to the Enterprise. Safratowich did not return KAXE request for comment on Thursday.
"I'm trying to understand — what is so offensive with God's words? Why is there such a problem?"Dennis Dodge
Dodge’s proposed donation comes just weeks after Itasca County painted over a giant display of the same placed across the gym wall of the newly built county jail. Jail Administrator Lucas Thompson’s decision to add the commandments and other famous quotes with religious themes drew immediate public support and criticism.
It also drew warnings of legal action from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation. The nonprofit, which works as a watchdog for the separation of church and state, has already sent a letter to the Park Rapids School District, too. The Supreme Court has taken up many cases over the decades related to the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment, shaping the relationship between religion and government.
In the letter addressed to Safratowich, the foundation stated Dodge misrepresented the Supreme Court decision Van Orden v. Perry on the Texas State Capitol.
“He fails to mention the majority’s distinction between a Ten Commandments display on Texas’s Capitol grounds and those in schools,” the letter states. “There are particular concerns that arise in the context of public elementary and secondary schools.”
The organization argued the School Board must reject this donation or it could be open to litigation.
“It should be obvious to anyone that the First Commandment alone — ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me’ — is the antithesis of our First Amendment, which, by the way, is one of the principles that truly makes America great,” stated Annie Laurie Gaylor, the foundation’s co-president, in a news release. “Park Rapids Area Schools has no business telling students which gods to have, how many gods to have or whether to have any gods at all.”
“There are particular concerns that arise in the context of public elementary and secondary schools.”Freedom From Religion Foundation
The rendering shared with the Board showed the Second Commandment missing, but Dodge said Wednesday this was an oversight, and he intends for all Ten Commandments to appear on the monument.
"I didn't have a chance to really look it over, so there are a couple of things that are wrong. [The Commandment] should not have been omitted, but it was,” Dodge said.
Despite two Ten Commandments-related letters sent to Northern Minnesota local governments in recent weeks, the foundation said it doesn’t see these displays in the state all that often. But legislatures in other states have considered a number of bills to force school districts to display the Commandments, including in Louisiana.
“One element that is jarring about the Itasca County and Park Rapids Area Schools complaints are that the government actors are choosing captive audiences,” wrote Hirsh M. Joshi, a legal fellow with the foundation, in an email. “Schools and prisoners are unable to freely move and leave if they feel uncomfortable. Not to mention, each display is just one person's interpretation of the Ten Commandments.”
