Tag: public schools

Posted on

Public School Advocates Release Lifewise Tool-kit

Some concerns with HB 445 and RTRI

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

Posted on

Do We Really Need To Teach Young Kids About Human Sacrifice?

Public schools all over the coun­try and espe­cial­ly in Ohio are being invad­ed by a Christian Nationalist group called LifeWise. They claim to be teach­ing char­ac­ter val­ues using Bible sto­ries but in review­ing some of these Bible sto­ries, we have to ask, Do we want to be teach­ing young kids about Human sac­ri­fice for exam­ple?

LifeWise sets up in a local school dis­trict and with parental per­mis­sion take kids off-campus for some Bible learn­ing dis­guised as Character and val­ue edu­ca­tion. They refuse to let the pub­lic review their cur­ricu­lum and is in fact suing some­one who legal­ly obtained a copy and post­ed it online.

Maybe this is why LifeWise refus­es to let peo­ple out­side of LifeWise see their cur­ricu­lum:

In the Elementary cur­ricu­lum, that is not­ed for Kindergarten through 3rd grade, Lesson 8 is about the char­ac­ter trait “sac­ri­fice”. One seg­ment of the les­son talks about God test­ing Abraham. For those who don’t know the sto­ry, God tells Abraham to take his son up into the moun­tain and sac­ri­fice him to show his loy­al­ty to God.

God wants Abraham to mur­der his own son to show much he “loves” God.

Abraham does what God says and takes his son up the moun­tain, builds an alter, and is just about ready to do the deed and an Angel stops him and lets him know that since he was ready to mur­der Isaac he knew he feared God (ie. would do what God Wanted).

Side note: Isaac had no clue his father was pre­pared to mur­der him.

So, not only is LifeWise teach­ing lit­tle kids that human sac­ri­fice can be a good thing as long as it is for God, here is this tid­bit

Example of a LifeWise Lesson about Human Sacrifice

The les­son is to have 2nd and 3rd graders act out the Abraham sto­ry and for the oth­er kids to pro­vide sound effects. Have the kids act out human sac­ri­fice for God? Some kids have issues with what is real and what is not so should we be teach­ing this par­tic­u­lar sto­ry? We don’t think so.

That isn’t the only prob­lem­at­ic sto­ry. Here is a les­son about the trait sub­mis­sion:

Submission means learn­ing to be a good fol­low­er. Instead of doing our own thing, we can do what we are asked. We don’t talk back or demand our way. We choose to “fol­low the leader,” whether that is God, our par­ents, our teach­ers or oth­er good author­i­ties God puts in our lives.

LifeWise Lesson Example

In an iron­ic twist, the title of the les­son is “Jacob’s New Name” and some of the activ­i­ties are kids choos­ing a new name as a game. Yet, Joel Penton, the founder of LifeWise is against kids choos­ing their own name to social­ly tran­si­tion at school. Also LifeWise train­ing doc­u­ments make clear that the order of author­i­ty for chil­dren is God then their Parents.

If this was a sec­u­lar les­son about sub­mis­sion (it would­n’t be called that in the first place), the teacher would also talk about caveats like are you being hurt or ‘has an adult asked you to keep a secret.’ Unlike this Bible sto­ry we don’t teach kids to nev­er ques­tion why an adult or par­ent is ask­ing them to do some­thing. There will be things a kid must do that they don’t want to do — like their home­work or mow­ing the yard, but typ­i­cal­ly they need to “sub­mit” as long as it won’t hurt them in some way that typ­i­cal­ly is ille­gal if uncov­ered.

And what if a child actu­al­ly mur­ders their class­mate and they say they did it because God told them to do it?

LifeWise does­n’t have an answer for that.

If you are inter­est­ed in more infor­ma­tion about the prob­lems with LifeWise, check out our recent episode of Glass City Humanist.

Click on the image for link
Posted on

Judge Rules Against Catholic Families in Sylvania Bus Dispute

Images of Sylvania school bus

On Tuesday 3/19, Lucas coun­ty Judge Stacy Cook ruled that the Sylvania City School District bus trans­porta­tion plan for stu­dents of non-public schools does­n’t vio­late Ohio law or con­sti­tu­tion.

Back in 2022, a cou­ple of fam­i­lies that send their chil­dren to a catholic school in Sylvania, filed a law­suit because their chil­dren had to be picked up hours before their school start­ed, trans­port­ed with old­er stu­dents, then dropped off at a high school to trans­fer to anoth­er bus, to arrive at their catholic school. The par­ents thought it was unlaw­ful and vio­lat­ed the equal pro­tec­tion and reli­gious free­dom claus­es of the Ohio con­sti­tu­tion.

From the rul­ing:

“The evi­dence sub­mit­ted by plain­tiffs con­sist of sev­er­al affi­davits by the par­ties and a non­par­ty spouse. These affi­davits recite that they choose Catholic edu­ca­tion because of their per­son­al Catholic faith. The affi­davits also recite the var­i­ous incon­ve­niences the Plaintiffs and their chil­dren face because of the District’s trans­porta­tion scheme. However, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have offered no evi­dence of any coer­cive effects on their reli­gious prac­tice: there is no evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled Plaintiffs to do any­thing for­bid­den by their reli­gion or that it has caused them to refrain from doing some­thing required by their reli­gion. Plaintiffs have also not offered any evi­dence that the trans­porta­tion plan has com­pelled them to affirm or dis­avow a belief for­bid­den or required by their reli­gion. Accordingly, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have failed to demon­strate any coer­cive effect upon their reli­gious prac­tice. The Plaintiffs have there­fore failed to show that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution.

The Court finds against Plaintiffs as to their claim that Defendants’ trans­porta­tion plan vio­lates their right to free exer­cise of reli­gion under the Ohio Constitution. Again, the pre­sump­tion that a leg­isla­tive act is con­sti­tu­tion­al applies to the Board’s trans­porta­tion plan. With this pre­sump­tion the Court finds in favor of Defendants as to Plaintiffs’ free exer­cise claim.”

JENNIFER A SWIECH, et. al., v. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF THE SYLVANIA CITY SCHOOL DIST., et. al.,

Both par­ties had asked for a sum­ma­ry judge­ment since the facts in the case weren’t in dis­pute. In the orig­i­nal law­suit the fam­i­lies asked the court for an injunc­tion to order the school dis­trict to “fix” the trans­porta­tion plan. Judge Cook said the court could­n’t do that, it could only rule if the dis­tric­t’s act was law­ful and not uncon­sti­tu­tion­al.

The orig­i­nal law­suit was dis­missed by the par­ents on August 30, 2022. Parents refiled on September 16, 2022 and asked for class action sta­tus and removed all ref­er­ences to the 1st amend­ment to keep it out of Federal court. The class action was nev­er cer­ti­fied.

A lawyer for the fam­i­lies, who was one of the plain­tiffs when the law­suit had been filed in August 2022 but dropped out in September of 2022, stat­ed they were prob­a­bly going to appeal the rul­ing.

Additional infor­ma­tion on this sto­ry is in the Toledo Blade behind a pay­wall. Images of the arti­cle is below.

Posted on

A Released Time Religious Instruction FAQ is now available

We were con­tact­ed recent­ly by some­one who lives in the Sylvania Public school dis­trict. She said that LifeWise had a pre­sen­ta­tion sched­uled for the next school board meet­ing and want­ed to know if we had any infor­ma­tion about the group.

Released Time Religious Instruction is allowed under Ohio Revised Code 3313.6022. The big take­away is that school dis­tricts aren’t required to adopt RTRI poli­cies.

Other points from the law:

(1) The student’s par­ent or guardian gives writ­ten con­sent.

(2) The spon­sor­ing enti­ty main­tains atten­dance records and makes them avail­able to the school dis­trict the stu­dent attends.

(3) Transportation to and from the place of instruc­tion, includ­ing trans­porta­tion for stu­dents with dis­abil­i­ties, is the com­plete respon­si­bil­i­ty of the spon­sor­ing enti­ty, par­ent, guardian, or stu­dent.

(4) The spon­sor­ing enti­ty makes pro­vi­sions for and assumes lia­bil­i­ty for the stu­dent.

(5) No pub­lic funds are expend­ed and no pub­lic school per­son­nel are involved in pro­vid­ing the reli­gious instruc­tion.

(6) The stu­dent assumes respon­si­bil­i­ty for any missed school­work.

LifeWise Academy is a large reli­gious group based in Columbus that works with local groups to install Bible class­es in school dis­tricts. In 2022, LifeWise brought in over $6 mil­lion in dona­tions, enrolls near­ly 30,000 stu­dents from more than 300 schools across more than 12 states. LifeWise has a strong pres­ence in Ohio. LifeWise will be in more than 170 Ohio school dis­tricts by next school year — more than a quar­ter of the state’s school dis­tricts.

LifeWise only teach­es Christianity and only hires Christians to be instruc­tors and staff.

The oth­er issues we have is that chil­dren are being removed from school grounds for an hour more by peo­ple who don’t work for the school dis­trict and who the dis­trict does­n’t vet. The class­es have absolute­ly no con­nec­tion to any­thing being taught in the pub­lic school. It is basi­cal­ly a Sunday school dur­ing the week. LifeWise claims it is teach­ing char­ac­ter val­ues but you can learn those val­ues with­out reli­gion.

We have cre­at­ed a FAQ page about Released Time Religious Instruction with addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about the class­es and LifeWise.

Posted on

We Oppose HB 183: The Bathroom Ban For Trans People

President Douglas Berger sub­mit­ted writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny to the Ohio House Higher Education Committee that is con­sid­er­ing House Bill 183 that would pro­hib­it trans­gen­der kids and adults from using the pub­lic bath­rooms that align with their gen­der iden­ti­ty.

Two peo­ple on the com­mit­tee are from the NW Ohio area. Rep. Derek Merrin (R‑42) and Rep. Josh Williams (R‑41).

The hear­ing for oppo­si­tion tes­ti­mo­ny is Wednesday October 11th. Here is the text of his tes­ti­mo­ny as sub­mit­ted:

Chair Rep. Young, Vice Chair Rep. Manning, and Ranking Member Rep. Miller, my name is Douglas Berger and I am President of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie, based in Toledo.

I am writ­ing today to express our group’s oppo­si­tion to House Bill 183 that would pro­hib­it trans­gen­der kids and adults from using the pub­lic bath­rooms that align with their gen­der iden­ti­ty.

We oppose this dis­crim­i­na­to­ry bill since it reminds us of the dark days of Jim Crow when bath­rooms and even drink­ing foun­tains were seg­re­gat­ed by race and this bill is based on the same kind of false nar­ra­tive and flim­sy evi­dence that those Jim Crow laws were based on.

We are also tired of mem­bers of this leg­is­la­ture pass­ing off irra­tional reli­gious big­otry as pub­lic pol­i­cy and law. When will your need to impose your reli­gion on oth­ers stop?

HB 183 has no fac­tu­al basis and no data to jus­ti­fy a ban is need­ed. Most anec­do­tal sto­ries are made up. The num­bers of teach­ers and peo­ple of faith who have been arrest­ed and charged for abus­ing chil­dren far out dis­tance any report­ed crime due to Trans peo­ple using the bath­room that aligns with their gen­der iden­ti­ty. I am more fear­ful of a child being alone with a priest or min­is­ter than using a bath­room with a Trans per­son.

Representative Lear and Bird also failed to note which reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive lob­by group they copied and past­ed this ridicu­lous pro­pos­al from. There is a rea­son these pro­pos­als all look alike.

We can also promise that the peo­ple who intro­duced this bill and at least three mem­bers of this com­mit­tee have nev­er met a Trans kid and has nev­er talked to the Trans com­mu­ni­ty but they seem to want to dis­crim­i­nate against Trans peo­ple any­way. I’m sure it is eas­i­er to dis­crim­i­nate when you nev­er talk to them.

Our mem­bers would also like to know who will enforce this ban and how will it be enforced. Will birth cer­tifi­cates be required to be shown or will a school offi­cial be des­ig­nat­ed as a gen­i­tal check­er? Will you have a par­ent sign a form so their child can have a gen­i­tal check? If there is no enforce­ment mech­a­nism then this pro­pos­al is just for show. In fact it would be used to out Trans kids and bul­ly them.

Adding on an unfund­ed man­date on pub­lic schools and col­leges that you bare­ly help fund is also some­thing to con­sid­er.

In a recent TV inter­view, a mem­ber of this com­mit­tee said that edu­ca­tion­al pol­i­cy should only go toward the aca­d­e­m­ic progress of stu­dents and we should­n’t be intro­duc­ing social issues into the class­room. How does HB 183 advance aca­d­e­m­ic progress? It does­n’t but it sure intro­duces social issues into the class­room. How will this bill improve the dis­mal school rank­ing the state has received recent­ly.

Why don’t Trans kids deserve to be pro­tect­ed too?

We ask you to vote no on HB 183.

Posted on

SHoWLE Opposes Senate Bill 49: The Religious Expression Days “R.E.D.” Act.

This ses­sion, the Ohio Senate intro­duced Senate Bill 49 also known as The Religious Expression Days “R.E.D.” Act. If passed it would give reli­gious stu­dents in pub­lic schools three days off each year for reli­gious rea­sons. SHoWLE oppos­es this bill for the main rea­son is it gives spe­cial priv­i­leges to reli­gious stu­dents. We also don’t believe a law is need­ed since many school dis­tricts cur­rent­ly make accom­mo­da­tions for reli­gious obser­vances.

SHoWLE President Douglas Berger sub­mit­ted writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny to the Ohio Senate Education com­mit­tee. Here is the text of his remarks:

Continue read­ing “SHoWLE Opposes Senate Bill 49: The Religious Expression Days “R.E.D.” Act.”
Posted on

Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie Condemns Ohio HB 616

The Board of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie urges leg­is­la­tors and our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers to oppose Ohio House Bill 616.

HB 616 elim­i­nates the abil­i­ty to teach on and dis­cuss top­ics like sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, gen­der iden­ti­ty, and race. If enact­ed, HB 616 would attempt to erase dis­cus­sion of the his­to­ry and lived expe­ri­ences of mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties and stu­dents. The bil­l’s broad lan­guage will have a chill­ing effect on learn­ing envi­ron­ments.

HB 616’s def­i­n­i­tion of anti-racist con­cepts like diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion as “inher­ent­ly racist” and its explic­it men­tions of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty and crit­i­cal race the­o­ry sug­gest a focus on the sen­si­bil­i­ties of a nar­row group of adults, rather than deep engage­ment with the needs and con­cerns of teach­ers and stu­dents in Ohio’s K‑3 class­rooms.

Humanists “com­mit to treat­ing each per­son as hav­ing inher­ent worth and dig­ni­ty” and “long for and strive toward a world of mutu­al care and con­cern” (The Third Humanist Manifesto). HB 616 direct­ly con­tra­dicts our core val­ues by attempt­ing to leg­is­late away any dis­cus­sion of already mar­gin­al­ized groups.

Listening to peo­ple’s sto­ries is at the heart of acknowl­edg­ing each per­son­’s inher­ent worth. We can only move toward a world of mutu­al care by cul­ti­vat­ing empa­thy; empa­thy can­not be cul­ti­vat­ed when the sto­ries, expe­ri­ences, and his­to­ries of mar­gin­al­ized groups are made unspeak­able.

It is for these rea­sons that the Board of the Secular Humanists of Western Lake Erie con­demns this bill and oth­ers like it.

We also encour­age our mem­bers to com­mu­ni­cate with their State House Representative. You can find your rep­re­sen­ta­tive by enter­ing your address at the Ohio House of Representatives web­site.

Further infor­ma­tion about the bill can be found here:

House Bill 616 @ Equality Ohio 

House Bill 616 @ Honesty for Ohio Education

Tip of the hat to the Humanist Community of Central Ohio for shar­ing the for­mat of their state­ment used above.

Here for Good 2025: [Buy a T-shirt and Support SHoWLE](https://www.jupmodesupply.com/products/secular-humanists-of-western-lake-erie-here-for-good-2025)
Here for Good 2025: [Buy a T-shirt and Support SHoWLE](https://www.jupmodesupply.com/products/secular-humanists-of-western-lake-erie-here-for-good-2025)