Worthington City Schools is the latest district to rescind its religious release time policy.
The decision will put an end to the school's LifeWise Academy program, which allows students to attend off-campus Bible study during school hours.
The Worthington school board voted 4-0 on Monday to rescind the release time policy after Dec. 31, allowing students in the program to finish out the year.
Board member Jennifer Best worried that ending the program abruptly before Christmas would be unfair to students who were looking forward to attending over the next few weeks.
The move by the Worthington district comes just months after Westerville City Schools rescinded its release time policy, shuttering the LifeWise Academy program in that district.
During Monday’s board meeting, Best acknowledged that some families want and benefit from religious release time and Worthington's LifeWise program.
"I just can't understand why this program that is valuable to many families can't be after school,” Best said.
Best said she also worried about the program “getting out of hand” if more students decided to attend or more religious release programs began in the district.
In a statement, LifeWise Academy CEO Joel Penton, of Hilliard, said he's disappointed and that the program at Worthington had been set to expand to four additional schools in January.
“Without delay, Ohio lawmakers must pass legislation that requires school districts to allow for released time religious instruction, providing more clarity to communities that want to implement such a program,” Penton’s statement said, referring to bills in the Ohio House and Senate that would require schools to have a religious release policy instead of just allowing it.
Both bills seek to change just one word, “may” to “shall.”
Best also brought up the legislation, noting that she expects it to pass in the lame-duck session.
“From things I've heard and read and seen, I do think they're going to change the word to ‘shall’ rather than ‘may.’ And then we'll have to kind of start from scratch again,” Best said.
Still, she voted with board members Amber Epling-Skinner, Stephanie Harless and Kelli Davis to rescind the policy. School board president Nikki Hudson was not present when the vote was taken.
