WESTERVILLE, Ohio — A controversial religious program was reinstated to Westerville schools during Monday night’s board of education meeting.
The program is expected to start up again once the district receives a Memorandum of Understanding from its lawyers. This comes after liability and compliance issues caused the board to suspend the program in August.
LifeWise Academy is an optional Bible program allowed to be taught to students during school hours. While some parents are in support of the program, others feel strongly otherwise.
"I really don't think its a fit with a public school,” Steve Zeune, a parent in the district, said.
"Freedom of religion also means freedom from religion,” Becca Meacham, another parent in the district, said.
Some Westerville parents said religion has no place in a public school day. Zeune said he believes it’s a divisive program.
"Even on a global level, religion can be a very divisive topic, so regardless of what denomination any program is affiliated with, having a program that has those kinds of ties that's somehow made its way into a public school system is very concerning to me,” Zeune said.
Joel Penton, founder and CEO of LifeWise Academy, said they’re legally allowed to operate this program as long as it’s off-school property, privately funded, and students participating have parental permission. Penton said the students are bussed to offsite locations like a church for the program.
"There's kind of three ways of looking at this and that is schools mandating Bible education which we are not proposing. There's schools prohibiting Bible education which is not taking a neutral stance on the matter, and then there's schools simply allowing the option of Bible education which is the middle ground which is what we are advocating for,” Penton said.
But parents like Meacham have issues with the RTRI, or released time for religious instruction policy, and want the state to change the language of it.
"Changing the wording of the RTRI policy that children can only be released to their parents or guardian, not to another outside organization,” Meacham said.
Meacham said she believes if you allow one organization to teach courses like this, more will follow.
"Soon you have 4-5 different outside organizations infiltrating the school, taking the children out in mass exit in the middle of the day, that's going to be nothing but disruptive,” Meacham said.
Meacham added they everyone should be able to practice whatever religious views they believe in outside of school, and that the policy should reflect that.