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NORMAN — "The kids have needs,” Foyil schoolteacher Jenean Hendrickson said, adding that the teachers need help fulfilling them.

Hendrickson was one of 66 educators and 37 religious leaders who teamed up this week to learn how faith communities can give teachers and students the help they need without overstepping legal boundaries.

Discussion at the conference, hosted by the Oklahoma Education Association, largely focused on how religious organizations can help public schools reach out to at-risk children.

The Rev. Wade Burleson, senior pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid, said his church adopted a disadvantaged school after being approached by two members of his congregation.

"They said we ought to adopt an at-risk school. ... I said, ‘Show me how,'” Burleson said.

He acknowledges that the partnership wasn't always easy, but the mentorship church members provided paid off for both parties. And, he said, they followed guidelines and kept their mission to the children's education.

Burleson said though the children aren't affiliated with the church, recruitment wasn't the driving force behind the members' interest in them.

"We were interested in them as people,” he said.

The Rev. Kevin Lancaster of Ketchum voiced a similar opinion and talked about the number of children in his area with absent fathers.

"I want to be a good influence as a male, not just necessarily as a pastor,” he said.

But the fact that some faith-based organizations have had successful partnerships with schools doesn't mean they don't have to watch their step.

Churches sometimes come off as having a "savior complex,” said the Rev. Todd Littleton of Tuttle's Snow Hill Baptist Church.

Partnerships are best when the relationship has balance, he said.

The Rev. Bruce Prescott, executive director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists and president of the Oklahoma chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said faith groups can help financially, socially or academically.

But it takes only one or two people who breach the boundaries for a problem to arise, Prescott said.

A representative of the Oklahoma American Civil Liberties Union voiced apprehension about such partnerships.

"It's always a concern when you have churches being involved in public schools with activities because there's always a concern that a line would be crossed into proselytizing,” ACLU development director Michael Camfield said when told about the topic of the conference.

"I think it's something that is a legitimate concern given the fact that these kinds of things have been documented in the past in public schools with churches being given access to public school students and using that access to indoctrinate public school students.”

Churches should do what they want on their own time, in their own facilities and with their own resources, said Camfield, who was not at the conference.

"There's absolutely no reason for any kind of entanglement to occur,” he said.

A common theme of the conference was that people in religious organizations can model good behavior in the schools. Similarly, the conference itself was a model — for other states.

Educators from Kansas and Arizona took part in the event, which is the first of its kind that Oklahoma has presented, said Oklahoma Education Association President Roy Bishop.

"The sentiment of the people ... is that this is something they've waited a long time to see happen,” said Bishop, who was a sponsor of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes when he worked in Stillwater.

Sherri Yourdon, vice president of the Kansas National Education Association, came to Norman to learn how to broach the topic in her own state.

"Being here in the middle of the Bible Belt, we have to reach out for more than we have in the past to encourage our churches to work with us instead of against us,” she said. "Many of our teachers are faith-based and that doesn't go away when they go into the classroom.

"They don't preach — they continue to teach,” she said.