Tag: public schools

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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

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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
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”
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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.

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