Inside the growth and legality of LifeWise Academy

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) - The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." This has been rephrased over time as the “separation of church and state” or “the Establishment Clause.”

LifeWise Academy -- headquartered in Hilliard -- is very familiar with the Constitution and the Supreme Court ruling Zorach v. Clauson, 1952. 

That Supreme Court decision is what gives Release Time Religious Instruction (RTRI) like LifeWise Academy the freedom to run its organization. In short, it allows public school students to be taken out of school, during the school day, for religious education, or in LifeWise's case, what it calls “Bible-based character education.”

“The idea of the Establishment Clause was that those who founded our country fled government-sponsored religions in order to have their own religions,” Capital Law School constitutional law professor Dan Kobil said. “The Supreme Court recognized what it called a wall of separation between church and state. Essentially, we don't want the state to use its very immense power to try to coerce, to try to proselytize with regard to a particular religion or group of religions.”

LifeWise has grown exponentially in just the last five years. Tax filings show revenue eclipsing $35 million in 2024 compared to just more than $1 million five years ago.

"We will be likely more than doubling the number of schools we serve next school year, as we did this previous school year," LifeWise Founder and CEO Joel Penton said.

Each individual LifeWise program is run by a majority of volunteers, but also several paid staff members including a director.

"We require 50 signatures before we really start working with the community,” Penton said. “We say first show us that there's 50 people in town that want this to happen. There's a ten-step process, but we say show us 50 people that want it and then we'll get started.

"Release time has been around for over 100 years,” Penton added. “The Supreme Court ruling was 1952. And yet you've seen very few release up until recently, very few release time programs. And it's because of the many barriers to entry. And so that's why LifeWise was created. How can we make it easy for communities?"

More recently, House Bill 8 changed the Ohio constitution from "may allow" release time religious instruction to "shall allow," enshrining it into the state constitution.

"There's been very little opposition or challenge and I will say this: my impression is that there were a lot of school officials that were happy to be out of the decision making, say, you know, that that they're facing school boards, school board meetings with people in different colored t-shirts and, you know, in these environments and like, they have to decide, are we going to am I going to upset half the room or they're designing, they know they're going to upset half the room," Penton said.

NBC4's Kyle Beachy sat down with Penton at the new LifeWise headquarters in Hilliard. It's a substantially larger building than they previously were housed in. Here's more of their conversation.

Beachy: "When you're balancing that character education piece versus a mission field, how does that work?"

Penton: "Well, as a Christian, I see Christianity really everywhere as mission fields. You know, I, I see my own living room as a mission field. I see my neighborhood as a mission field, you know, as a Christian, to be in a relationship with God means to be someone then who also reaches out to others. And so certainly we would see schools. I wouldn't see that in any way conflicting with character education, you know, and what do you do in this mission field? You provide students with Bible based character education."

Beachy: "Critics use words like coercion. When you hear those words, what do you respond to that?"

Penton: "I hear those words and I think that that's likely coming from someone who's trying to tear down a good thing, you know, using a word like indoctrination instead of simply Bible education, which is what it is. I wouldn't, I don't know why anyone would use the word coercion when you're offering a voluntary program that you certainly want kids to enjoy it and want to come, and so you want to make it attractive and fun and engaging."

Beachy: "Does that does that walk the line of the Establishment Clause with offering some sort of goody or treat if they bring other people?"

Penton: "I don't think you, I'm not sure I would understand the connection to the Establishment Clause, but if I would say that it is very much in line with broadly accepted incentive type activities. And, you know, when I was in school, if you had perfect attendance, you would get, you know, some sort of incentive.

"This is really the first time I think in my life I've heard this double standard, but I do think it is a double standard that because it's a religious institution, these very commonly accepted practices of incentivizing people to bring friends, to join clubs and things like that, is, is it's strange to me."

Beachy: "Is there is there any plan or any desire to create a full day private school type atmosphere with LifeWise Academy?

Penton: "No. We provide release time, religious instruction to public school students during school hours and so we want to do one thing. We want to do it really well. Yeah. And so we're often asked about other things, you know, what about before school? What about after school? What about that rarely comes up like starting our own private school? I'm not. I have no interest. This is hard enough."

Beachy: "Where do you see LifeWise in five years?"

Penton: "In five years, we'd like to be in 10% of schools nationwide. That's 9,000 schools.

"We're nearing 50% of the school districts in the state of Ohio are confirmed to have a LifeWise program. So that's cool. At the end of the day, who gets to decide whether a child participates? Is it their parents or is it the school officials? And that we advocate that parents would have that chance."

Kobil also sat down with NBC4. Kobil interpreted the Supreme Court ruling Zorach v. Clauson as to how LifeWise applicates it.

"It sounds to me as if what LifeWise is doing by transporting children off of school property and not engaging in coercion,” Kobil said. “They are attempting to abide by the letter and spirit of the U.S. Supreme Court decision. To the extent that LifeWise is transporting children off of school premises and is not asking the state to coerce kids into going, they are attempting to comply with the letter of the law act. However, if they are attempting to make religious instruction more attractive by offering benefits or goodies, then that at least potentially raises the possibility of coercion, which I think is inconsistent with the spirit of the decision.

"Let's say, for example, they were giving, you know, greater or, freedom in terms of recreational activities to kids who participate in the religious release time than they were doing for the other kids,” Kobil continued. “They said, ‘You have to go sit in the library and do something less desirable without air conditioning,’ you know, or something like that. That could be seen as indirect coercion, and that sort of coercion could well run afoul of the Establishment Clause. There could be a point at which the goodies that you got for participating in release time religious study could be so attractive, and the options for kids who opted not to so boring or unattractive that that could amount to a potential indirect coercion."

LifeWise has come under fire several times in the past. It is being sued by a former employee, settled a lawsuit with an Indiana parent over exposing its curriculum online, had its programs pulled from Worthington schools and Westerville schools, and fired a LifeWise program director after it was reveled she was fired in the past for accusations of "sexting" a student.

Penton maintains LifeWise has policies in place to prevent that from happening again and comply with background checks and school's requests for specific background checks for staff. LifeWise volunteers and staffers are not held to the same standard public employees and school staff are held to when it comes to background checks, though Penton said LifeWise trusts its background check provider.

"We have conversations with the local school, whether that's or is there something specific that the school would like to see around this safety issue, around this scheduling issue, around this logistic issue and that's the case with background checks,” he said. “So sometimes schools want us to go through a particular system or use a particular system and send them documentation about it. I think that what has happened has shown the effectiveness of what we do. You know, there is a, an issue with the teacher, which was a little over a year ago. So somebody that there was nothing on their background check. It was in their work history. But before the program, it was a director, in fact, wasn't a teacher and local director before the program even got up and running, it was discovered and that person was terminated. And, you brought up a facility, you know, before the program started, a different facility was chosen. And so I think that those are examples of how the system's working.  I think it's safe to say this, the spotlight's on us, but that's, that's quite all right. You know, safety is our highest priority. We want to do things completely above board. We want to do things the right way. And so we welcome the scrutiny. We welcome the microscope, the spotlight.”

Kobil raised a few concerns with the legal ramifications of background checks and job qualifications.

"If LifeWise is employing people who might have lower qualifications or potentially questionable backgrounds, that the parental consent be entirely knowing and intelligent, so they need to disclose any differences in the qualifications of the people who would be caring for the students,” he said. “If I were counsel for the schools, I would be telling them, you better make sure that if you're giving charge of the children to another organization, that they are as well vetted as your own teachers.

"It's up to the school to make sure that regardless of where they get the message, that all children have a safe learning environment," Kobil said.

A second part to this story, on LifeWise’s funding sources, will air on NBC4 on Tuesday.