“What’s the harm?”
Ask the kids left behind.
Ask the child whose friends leave every week and come back with treats.
Ask the child who is told they are missing “truth”, “character”, or “values”.
Ask the kids who are stuck doing busy work because 80% of their class leaves.
Ask the child who feels singled out because their Jewish family said no.
Ask the front office staff expected to manage the chaos of mass release during the school day.
Ask the teacher who has to pause, repeat, rearrange, or fill time because part of the class is gone.
Ask the lunch workers expected to pack meals for children leaving campus for a private religious program.
Ask the parent who did not realize a private religious program was being woven into the public school day.
Ask the parents in small towns who spoke up and then learned how quickly “parental rights” disappears when the parent says no.
Ask the parents treated like protecting public schools made them “un-Christian.”
Ask the superintendent who called it “a scam and slap in the face of public education” — and still said state law would force his hand.
Ask every school employee expected to make this work while pretending it costs the district nothing.
Ask every child who learns, very quickly, which beliefs the adults around them are treating as normal … and which children are expected to quietly sit apart.
Released-time religious instruction is often sold as harmless because it is “optional.”
But optional for one family can still create disruption, pressure, exclusion, and lost classroom time for everyone else.
Public schools belong to everyone.
Religious freedom requires neutral schools.🇺🇸
What people are saying:
- Facebook User: As a Christian and a teacher, I deeply appreciate what you all are doing. My faith is important to me but it has no business being in school.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User Thank you! And thank you for your service to our students and for your dedication to the keeping our public schools neutral and free for all religions. Yes, we agree. MANY of our members are faithful Christians and we absolutely need to help hold the line- for ALL kids. 💜
- Facebook User: The dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. Kids need MORE time in school not less.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User we absolutely agree. And watching our state legislators across the country – make this mandatory for our districts to deal with is infuriating. They don’t care about our kids or their education. Clearly.
- Facebook User: Facebook User no they do not
- Facebook User: Ask the taxpayers who don’t want to fund this.
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User THIS
- Facebook User: Facebook User funny how the maga will cry about funding medical and SNAP for children but insist on protecting this bs
It’s absolutely horrifying
- Facebook User: Frankly, CHRISTIAN families shouldn’t be asked to send their kids away from classroom instruction to Bible school either. People shouldn’t be forced to justify why they want their children to receive school during school hours. It’s ridiculous.
- Facebook User: Ask the kids who were told by their friends they are going to hell.
- Facebook User: Facebook User happened to my daughter for the first time in 3rd grade and that was even 35 years before this leaving school for bible study crap started!! I can’t imagine how bad it is now
- Facebook User: Facebook Userit never happened to my kids, even in my super conservative county, until lifewise started
- Facebook User: Facebook User we were the only Jewish people in our town and happened several times. I just can’t even imagine how bad it would be now. I don’t even understand how it is legal for them to leave school as you are required to attend a certain number of hours every day?
- Facebook User: I think teacher should just continue teaching whether is in one kid or 3 kids then the ones that leave will have to catch up
- Secular Education Association: Facebook User we do too. In fact. The kids leaving for RTRI are supposed to make up that work- but more often than not we see the kids staying getting busy work or “no new instruction time” as we have seen administrators call it.
- Facebook User: Facebook User As a teacher, I was instructed to assign an NG, no grade, for those attending LifeWise for STEM class.
Secular Education Association - Facebook User: Secular Education Association thats crazy and the administrators should get their heads out of their butts and require new instruction time for those kids who stay. It’s just another way for the legislators to “prove” public schools are bad and sneaky way to for abuse to happen. Thank you for your tireless work in protecting the public schools and the kids safety.
- Facebook User: Facebook User When its time for state testing, will we be able to mark the test questions as “not applicable” because that student was out of the classroom during that instruction? Will we still use test results to determine which teachers are “effective” regardless of whether students actually attending class?
- Facebook User: Facebook User so is that like an “incomplete”?
- Facebook User: Facebook User It’s like a “this group is gonna take some of your students away and their unvetted amateurs are gonna teach them some Iron Age fairy tales, scare them with stories of hell and maybe feed them pizza, so they’re gonna miss your class, maybe for a quarter, a semester or even a whole year, so for them, your class literally doesn’t exist and that’s why you have to give an NG and you have no say in this even though you’re a licensed, professional educator” grade.
Secular Education Association - Facebook User: Facebook User oh! So the class period that they miss isn’t considered a graded subject! I thought you meant that the student who missed class got an incomplete grade.
- Facebook User: Facebook User But who do you think 🤔 s expected to catch those kinds DS up? And who do y’all u 💬 no is having their time wasted while they should be learning because the teacher has to catch those kids up in their rder to be able to move on to the next thing?
- Facebook User: If you’re a new member, we fight to keep religious instruction out of public schools. We monitor how schools implement RTRI, and the biggest threat right now is LifeWise Academy.
LifeWise Academy is a scam. Preaching biblical literalism, using unvetted amateur adult “teachers,” dividing schoolchildren with beliefs about god, hell, sexuality, and Iron Age fairy tales.
Keep watching this space and stay alert in your own communities. Let’s protect public education together.
- Facebook User: Word
- Facebook User: Ask the families who see their athlete not started, their actor not cast, their scholar not recognized after they chose not to participate. And because these things are subjective, it’s almost impossible to prove the adults are discriminating based on religion (or lack thereof).
- Facebook User: Facebook User THIS. It is so covert & insidious. Calling it out makes your kid a target. Retaliation, clear proof of an adverse action, is impossible to proove & gaslighting is to the nth. Coaches, faculty and administrators have a lot of influence on your student’s success. Parents tread lightly and they know it.
- Facebook User: Beautifully said! When I see them at my school I say “the pedos are here” to myself. Inside thoughts……
- Facebook User: Religion poisons everything.
- Facebook User: If you looknat the progression here, from children quietly leaving for x period of time….no reponsibility on part of school to ensure what happens after the child walks thru the door, no responsibility for ensure they return and certainly no responsibility to make a packed lunch, children not to leave during core subjects and no responsibility to provide them with “catch up” when they return. Release 1 day a week during time dictated by school board. Now, with Lifewise putting pressure on the state, lawsuits, promotional material…some sent directly to schools….their ability to snatch these kids is expanded. The impact on the public schools, staff and students increased. All for assisting this radically raped version of a respectable faith for purpose of grooming our children towards helping to create an eventual Christian Nationalist nation.
- Facebook User: Ask the parents who have found out there are several volunteers in this “harmless” lifewise program who have been forced to leave the program because they were accused and plead guilty to rape of a child, and then same”harmless” program telling everyone its all okay because the rape didnt happen within this program.
- Facebook User: There should be no religion in public schools. You want your kids to get a religious education and be brainwashed fools. Send them to a private school and pay for it yourself.
- Facebook User: What Lifewise is doing is teaching “Christian Nationalism ” . They are grooming the next generation to hate who they hate and draping it in Christianity
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