A woke Washington school district must pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorney’s fees in exchange for requiring school board members to take religious training and settling a lawsuit that contended the district had violated Christian students’ first amendment rights. Everett School District was sued over creating an environment for students involved with LifeWise Academy where they had to conceal their Bibles when returning to class.
“I also heard from parents that it was, you know, their children felt like they were being told they had to hide their faith when they were told they had to put their Bibles and things in envelopes, as it was something to be ashamed of. And I know that was very hurtful as well. My name is Joel Penton. I’m the founder and CEO of Lifewise Academy, and Lifewise provides Bible education for public school students during school hours,” CEO Joel Penton said in an interview.
“We serve students and families all over the nation. And one of our programs is in Everett, Washington. And our program had been operating for a couple years, serving dozens of students, dozens of families. Everything going smoothly. But then the school board changed some of their policies in some ways that were pretty transparently discriminatory and infringed on the religious liberty of our program there,” he continued.
“And some of those policy changes included requiring parents instead of simply signing a permission slip one time for the entire semester or the entire year they were requiring them to hand bring in a permission slip each and every week, which was quite onerous. They also told us we weren’t able to participate at some of the community fairs, which all other student organizations were able to participate in,” he added.
“And then they also told students that if they received any worksheets or even a Bible at our program, when they came back to the school, that those had to come back in sealed envelopes so that other students wouldn’t be exposed to them. At least with the permission slip policy, that it was meant to effectively shut down the program,” he continued.
“That one of the reasons students, parents enroll their students is because of the how practical and convenient it is for them to receive Bible education during school hours as part of their school day, and now to tell them that they had to personally bring in a permission slip each and every week just made it really impractical for a lot of parents. And I know there were many who were frustrated about that,” he said.
“We knew that when these policies came out that they were unconstitutional, and so we were not looking for any type of fight. We tried to handle it quietly. We simply contacted the school and said, “You know, these policies are discriminatory. Could you please change them? We did not get a good response, and so then we had an attorney send the letters. Well, again, to try to handle it quietly, and it wasn’t until we felt like we had no other option that we did file a suit,” he went on.
“And pretty quickly we received a preliminary injunction from a federal judge saying that the school did have to go ahead and change the policies, and then not long after that we did reach a settlement in which yes the school did in fact have to change all their policies as we had requested and then on top of that they are changing they are paying attorneys’ fees. They are issuing a public apology, and they are all undergoing religious liberty training,” he said.
“There’s an educator that is considering restrictions. I would ask them to reconsider, and I would maybe just ask them, “Hey, do you would like to see your students showing up for school more, you know. Would you like to see fewer absences? Would you like to see fewer suspensions? Would you like to see higher scores on state tests? Well, LifeWise has been proven to improve all of those numbers. And then on top of that, I would want them to consider this situation and consider that you know what we do is entirely legal, and hopefully this clears up any confusion,” he finished.
Watch Penton below:
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded video