Author: Doug

Most of you know we have been focused on the growth of Lifewise Academy and the inher­ent prob­lems it cre­ates for our pub­lic schools. President Doug Berger has been work­ing for a few months with a team made up of a cross-section of peo­ple con­cerned with Lifewise. It was led and host­ed by Honesty for Ohio Education and on August 29th they released a tool-kit and oth­er infor­ma­tion the pub­lic can use to lim­it or elim­i­nate the dam­age done by Lifewise.

For those new to the issue, Lifewise is a Released Time Religious Instruction (RTRI) pro­gram that, with parental per­mis­sion, removes kids from their pub­lic school and takes them off-campus to a Bible school class dur­ing the school day.

This is a prob­lem on many lev­els. Lifewise refus­es to have their pro­gram before or after school, they have used friends in the state leg­is­la­ture to strong arm dis­tricts who won’t let them oper­ate, and the pro­gram is less than trans­par­ent in their oper­a­tions.

The tool-kit goes over in more detail all the issues with the Lifewise pro­gram.

SHoWLE oppos­es RTRI on church and state grounds and would love for dis­tricts not to have a pol­i­cy at all. But we have been work­ing with the Honesty team to come up with some solu­tions that pro­tect the school dis­tricts and the chil­dren involved. These pro­tec­tions are miss­ing from the state law Lifewise is abus­ing. The tool-kit includes a mod­el pol­i­cy that dis­tricts should adopt or use to revise their cur­rent pol­i­cy if they have one.

Honesty and SHoWLE oppose HB 445 and SB 293 which would require school dis­tricts to have an RTRI pol­i­cy but would not address the seri­ous issues raised about Lifewise.

Our President Doug Berger got to help make the pre­sen­ta­tion on the 29th and here is a copy of the remarks he planned to make but due to time con­straints was not able to speak from them entire­ly.

My name is Douglas Berger and I am the founder and pres­i­dent of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie. I have been fol­low­ing this issue since 2014 when the law that Lifewise is abus­ing was passed in the Ohio Legislature. Ohio Revised Code 3313.6022 was nev­er intend­ed to be used to allow the mass move­ment of pub­lic school chil­dren from the school to a Bible class in the mid­dle of their school day. The law was intend­ed to give high school stu­dents the chance to gain course cred­it for reli­gious class­es they might attend dur­ing the day in addi­tion to their reg­u­lar course work. The law sat on the books for almost 10 years before Lifewise came into exis­tence and abused the law for their own ends.

Released time has been part of the fab­ric of the pub­lic school since the US Supreme Court case Zorach v Clauson was decid­ed in 1952. All schools have poli­cies now that allow for stu­dents to be tak­en out of school by par­ents for reli­gious rea­sons. I know from my own his­to­ry that some of my class­mates would leave school to par­tic­i­pate in Ash Wednesday mass and return to school with ash on their fore­head. I also know that some rur­al Hancock coun­ty schools, my home coun­ty, have had RTRI pro­grams since the 1970s. This is a com­mon occur­rence.

The issue isn’t Released time but the abuse of it by Lifewise and any pro­gram that refus­es to oper­ate before or after school as has been done for more than 50 years by oth­er oper­a­tors who actu­al­ly respect the pub­lic schools in which they exist.

Lifewise stat­ed goal is to con­vert chil­dren to their brand of Christianity and to turn the pub­lic schools into reli­gious schools.

I am a tax­pay­er and firm sup­port­er of the pub­lic schools. The use of released time in the mid­dle of the school day hurts the edu­ca­tion of not only the kids who attend the pro­gram but the kids who are left behind.

I also have major con­cerns with how Lifewise oper­ates and I know that some have prob­lems with the the­ol­o­gy they teach which they refuse to freely share with any­one. They are known to bul­ly dis­tricts that don’t coop­er­ate or to use “friends” in state and local gov­ern­ment to lean on them. There are now two bills in the leg­is­la­ture, one in the House is HB 445 and the one in the Senate is SB 293 that would force school dis­tricts to adopt poli­cies under ORC 3313.6022 — which would­n’t con­tain any guardrails to pro­tect chil­dren. That is what Lifewise wants so they can get around local dis­tricts who val­ue all stu­dents edu­ca­tion more than the reli­gious beliefs of a few.

Let me restate that Lifewise does­n’t need the law to oper­ate. They could start up a new pro­gram in any dis­trict today but they want the state to force all dis­tricts in Ohio to allow them to oper­ate dur­ing the school day. If a dis­trict refus­es to allow Lifewise to inter­rupt the school day it isn’t vio­lat­ing a par­en­t’s 1st amend­ment right to guide the edu­ca­tion of their chil­dren. They can always put the stu­dent in pri­vate school or in a pro­gram that oper­ates before or after school.

I don’t care that Lifewise is Christian and I would­n’t care about the reli­gion or non-religion of a pro­gram that wants to dis­rupt a school day. I would still oppose the dis­rup­tion.

I urge every­one to ask some seri­ous ques­tions if your dis­trict has a Lifewise pro­gram or if they are plan­ning on com­ing to your dis­trict. Work with your school board to install the guardrails miss­ing from Ohio’s Released Time law to pro­tect your chil­dren and your school dis­trict. Some of those guardrails are men­tioned in the toolk­it and also talk to your leg­is­la­tor about this issue and con­vince them why guardrails are need­ed and why this needs to be left up to the indi­vid­ual school dis­tricts.

Thank you

For more infor­ma­tion about this issue and to view and down­load the took-kit vis­it:

Honesty for Ohio Education — RTRI Tool-Kit