The new principal at Maxfield Magnet in St Paul this year is actually a minister at St Peter’s African Methodist Church in Minneapolis, one of the largest and most socially conservative black churches in the Twin Cities.

And if you look at who the African American district administrators are in the metro districts, you will see the links through these “faith based partnerships” between the public schools and black churches even more clearly.

Look at the African American organizations and players who inserted themselves in the current Burroughs debacle, and one can discern the pattern.

There are race wars in the schools going on that the Twin Cities media is ignoring: race wars over political turf between the African American community and their socially conservative agenda parading as a progressive DFL agenda, who continues to attack, marginalize and force out the immigrant communities, the LGBT communities, and the secular African American intellectual community.

More than scary. We have seen the results of these “faith based initiatives” in the schools. They are a gravy train for a few greedy folk, and have had no impact whatsoever on raising test scores for students or closing the so-called racial achievement gap.

I say so-called racial achievement gap, because the gap isn’t about race, it’s about class. It is a poverty achievement gap.

That is wrong – just as wrong as if they were made to graduate at my home, and all around my home were signs saying “G-d is Dead.”

We’re supposed to conduct public business with neutrality toward the wide array of religious beliefs and practices in our community, not favor some over others by picking one’s faith setting over others.