An Akron, Ohio mom is trying to get her two children back into a Cuyahoga Falls private school after they were kicked out because an administrator claimed that she “committed adultery.”
Summer Grant told WKYC that her two daughters, Summara and Summaia, who were in the fourth and second grade at Chapel Hill Christian School were banned because administrator pastor John Wilson said she was living in sin.
“He said it was many reasons and the main one was because I was not married and my children had different fathers,” Grant told the news station.
Grant recorded a conversation between herself and Wilson, where Wilson could be head telling the young mother that she broke the school’s covenant because her children have different fathers, and she was living with a partner, without being married.
“There’s 10 commandments and committing adultery is not part of that,” Pastor Wilson said. “It’s not that they should not go to the school it’s that they can’t go to the school.”
Grant believes her children are being unjustly punished, given that they have never been in trouble. Grant showed WKYC certificates extolling the children’s good performance.
The only time the two kids were ever in trouble was following a misunderstanding with their bus driver two weeks ago.
According to Grant, the bus driver wanted one of the kids to sit up at the front because he believed they weren’t listening. Grant says her daughter was just talking to a friend.
The following day, the bus driver called Grant over and she tried to mediate the incident, however the bus driver, who she claimed was rude, called the cops. No one was arrested.
Still, Grant believes that the incident had little to do with Wilson’s decision to kick the girls out.
Grant said this was not the first time that the pastor has questioned her marital status. Just last year at a conference he started questioning why her children had three different fathers. Wilson also reportedly gave her a list of recommendations to improve her life.
In the recorded conversation, Wilson also said that being married and having children with the same father is a “strong recommendation” of the school, though not a requirement.
Still, Grant doesn’t know why she is being targeted, as she says other parents who have kids at the school aren’t married either.
“As Christians you are not supposed to judge,” Grant said. “You shouldn’t have affected these kids education over that.”
Wilson declined to comment to WKYC but sent a statement claiming that parents sign a written agreement as a commitment to Christ. He insists that the Grants acted in a manner “inconsistent” with said covenant, adding that the “dismissal was necessary in order to protect the safety of our school children and their families”.
The school also issued a statement emphasizing that parents sign a written agreement “to conduct themselves in accordance with expressed guidelines of conduct. These policies include, but are not limited to, behavior that relates to the physical safety of our students.”
The girls, who were dismissed from the school last week, still have about a month of school yet. Despite the alleged treatment she has faced at the school, Grant wants her children to return to Chapel Hill, saying that she cannot send them to a public school or they would lose a scholarship that allowed them to go to the private school in the first place.