COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – A bill that would require Ohio public schools to adopt a policy permitting students to attend religious classes during the school day has been introduced at the Statehouse.
House Bill 445, sponsored by Reps. Gary Click (R-Vickery) and Al Cutrona (R-Canfield), would slightly tweak Ohio’s current law to “require” rather than “permit” school districts to adopt a policy authorizing students to attend released time courses in religious instruction.
“It is unfathomable that any school board would intentionally interfere with the rights of students in order to impose their own set of values,” Click said.
In the United States, public school students are legally allowed to attend religious classes during the school day due to a pair of Supreme Court decisions in 1948 and 1952, but there are restrictions.
Federal rules include religious classes can't be held on school grounds, school funds cannot be spent and students' attendance must be voluntary with parental permission. Public schools have discretion on whether to permit students to attend off-premise religious classes, according to the U.S. Department of Education.
Numerous states have further regulations. In Ohio, the student’s guardian must give written permission, the entity providing the classes must keep attendance, students may not miss core classes to attend religious instruction and schools cannot be held liable for anything that happens during the transportation of the students.
HB445 maintains existing requirements for schools’ religious instruction policies. Outside of these statewide requirements, the bill would not control what each school’s policy will be.
An estimated 75% of schools in Ohio have a policy regarding religious release time courses and 23 districts have specifically declined a policy, according to Click. If this bill were passed, he said most schools in the state would “see no change.”
Ryan Jayne, senior policy counsel with the nonprofit Freedom From Religion Foundation Action Fund, said if the bill were to be signed into law, districts that have decided not to allow students to attend religious instruction would be forced to do so.
“Parents have more than enough time in the week to provide religious education to their children without disrupting the school day,” Jayne said. “The Supreme Court has ruled that schools may allow for released time religious instruction, but it should be up to each individual district to decide whether it's in their students' best interest.”
A problem Jayne said he sees with religious release time programs is the promotion of “peer-to-peer evangelism,” where students face coercive pressure to attend the classes. He specifically pointed to LifeWise, a Hilliard-based religious education program.
“What this means is they coach students to recruit their classmates, incentivizing them with things like pizza parties,” Jayne said. “One LifeWise program in Indiana bragged that 82% of a district's Grade 1 [through] 8 students attended LifeWise. Imagine being one of the 18% of non-attendees, given busy work at school until your whole class comes back and they've all been told that if they get you to come to the Christian class next time, they get to have a pizza party.”
LifeWise was established in 2018, with an initial goal to serve 25 schools by 2025 – but it quickly skyrocketed past that goal. The program has set up chapters in more than 300 schools in a dozen states, teaching 35,000 public school students weekly Bible lessons, according to NBC News.
LifeWise claims on its website that a study by national consulting firm Thomas P. Miller & Associates shows that LifeWise programs improve student attendance and behavior. It also states in a survey of 500 educators, 76% agreed that both schools and students benefited from LifeWise.
HB445 received its first hearing in the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee on April 23, where it will receive future hearings open for public testimony.
