Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times

Students in the Weekday Religious Education program pile into the "Bible Bus" that takes them to a Bible lesson.

Sam Dean | The Roanoke Times

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1952 that school districts may release children once a week for religious education.

LOW MOOR -- Once a week, about 10 students from Karen Underwood's fourth-grade class at Mountain View Elementary School in Alleghany County climb into a 15-passenger van, dubbed the "Bible Bus," and bounce over a dirt track to a little red shed, the "Bible Clubhouse," less than a mile from school.

There they spend about 20 minutes learning about the Bible, singing songs, praying and filling out worksheets with their religious instruction teacher, Melissa Drennen.

It's called Weekday Religious Education, and it's widespread in more rural parts of Western Virginia. Concerns occasionally arise that the program violates the separation of church and state, but WRE and public school officials have developed a finely choreographed routine that has kept them within the law.

"We've had some battles," recalled JoAnne Shirley, state coordinator for WRE, which is getting ready to celebrate its 80th anniversary later this year. Most recently, parents and officials in Staunton debated the merits of the program in 2005.

"When it first started [in 1929], it spread across the whole state," she said. "For various reasons, which I'm not sure of, over those 80 years some of the different schools have left."

The religious education classes gained a measure of legitimacy with the 1952 Zorach v. Clauson decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, which gives school districts the opportunity to release children once a week for outside religious education programs. Today, about 33 states have released-time programs, as do about 20 school districts in Virginia, mostly along the Interstate 81 corridor, Shirley said.

In earlier decades, the religious groups held classes on school property. Since the 1980s, however, they've had to move off campus to comply with federal regulations.

Alleghany County, which for years had an informal agreement between the school system and religious educators, adopted a formal policy on released time in 2001.

"We had to make sure we were in complete compliance with the law, and we went through a process for the community to come to an understanding of the need for us to ensure appropriate balance between the desire of the community to have a program of this nature and this reality of the laws with which we must comply," Alleghany County Superintendent Bob Grimesey said.

Today, the program is offered to second-, third- and fourth-grade students, about 85 percent of whom take part, according to Bob Umstead, who coordinates the program in the county.

Donations from church groups provide a small salary for teachers, as well as for program materials. WRE teachers, such as Drennen, must find somewhere off school property to take their students.

The generator-powered shed that the program uses sits not far from the elementary school and seats about 12 children snugly. It's small, but it beats the old bus where WRE used to hold classes.

The past few months have been difficult, Umstead said. The area's depressed economy has hurt church income, which has hurt donations to WRE.

"That's what's important to me because that's what we need to survive," he said. "Our problems are just trying to exist."

Students who don't take part in the program stay in their classroom where their teacher, Underwood, leads them in enrichment or remediation activities.

"It allows me time to do a lot of individual help with the ones that are behind," she said.

One of the selling points for those who take part appears to be a chance to leave school and let off steam for a few minutes. On a recent morning, children giddily bounced and squirmed in their seats as Drennen drove the van to their off-site classroom.

"All right, let's everybody sit down," she said after the class had made it inside the shed. After an opening prayer, Drennen started an activity based on the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 5.

"We are thoughtful, and we are kind and we're gentle," said Drennen, prompting the children on the qualities they should emulate.

"Like an angel?" asked Zackary Shepard, the only boy in this class.

"Well, it depends what kind of angel you are," Drennen said.

A first-year teacher, Drennen is enthusiastic about her work.

"This is probably what I was made to do," she said. "I love the word of God and I love children."

When it was time to go back to the school, Drennen piled her charges in the van again and returned to Mountain View Elementary in time for lunch.