West Virginia State Delegate Daryl Cowles (R-Morgan County) says the debate over health care has no place in Berkeley Springs High School.

Cowles was reacting to an initiative launched this week by Single Payer Action.

Students at Berkeley Springs High School are wearing t-shirts to the school that read:

“What Would Jesus Do? Single Payer. Health Care for All. Everybody in. Nobody Out.”

The group is also running ads in the local newspaper — the Morgan Messenger — and on the local country music radio station — WDHC. (See newspaper ad here. Listen to radio ad here.)

Cowles sent out an e-mail yesterday to his list arguing that “the debate over big government health care, big government taxes, big government control, and big government deficits has no place in our school learning environment.”

The students’ single payer action has drawn some local attention — including an article in Tuesday’s Martinsburg Journal.

Cowles says in his e-mail that “political protest in favor of big government health care (is) coming to Berkeley Springs High School despite school policy.”

Cowles does not explain what high school policy prohibits students from expressing their free speech rights.

Cowles writes that organizers of the action are “looking to make some news when his student protesters are asked not to wear the shirts.”

Cowles does not identify any school policy that would allow a school administrator to ask a student not to wear a t-shirt.

Cowles’ e-mail was picked up by Berkeley Springs resident Jeff White, who sent around an e-mail urging parents to take action to stop the single payer action at the school.

“It looks like Berkeley Springs High School is being infiltrated by a political protest designed to push our kids towards supporting government run health care,” White wrote.

White urged parents to call and e-mail Morgan County School Superintendent Dave Banks urging him “to make sure this is stopped before it gets started.”

“It is not enough that our kids are many times required to watch left propaganda such as Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, listen to President Barack Obama streaming into the class rooms asking for them to support him or the unions dictating class room content and policy, now the students themselves are trying to do the same,” White wrote. “The sad fact is they don’t realize they and their parents are destroying their own future by succumbing to more big government.”

Single Payer Action has called on Congress to defeat Obama’s and the Democrats’ 2,000 page bill in Congress.

Single Payer Action calls the legislation a bailout of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

Instead, Single Payer Action wants Congress to pass the 27-page HR 676 — the single payer bill in the House.