EVERETT — Community members gathered at a school board meeting in Everett on Tuesday to voice their concerns over a controversial midday Bible education program after legal teams representing the program threatened to sue Everett Public Schools.
The program, LifeWise Academy, currently operates near Emerson Elementary in Everett. It opened in January, the first to begin in the Puget Sound area.
Once a week, volunteers from the nonprofit take children out of public school in the middle of the school day — during lunch and recess periods — for optional off-site Bible classes. Everett Public Schools does not support, endorse or oppose the program, but allows it to operate, citing a 1952 Supreme Court ruling and state guidance that allows off-campus religious instruction.
Some parents have previously spoken out against the program at board meetings over the past few months. But on Tuesday, dozens nearly filled the board room following a Nov. 19 letter, sent to the Everett Public Schools Board of Directors, that threatened legal action if the board didn’t relax a number of rules surrounding released-time religious instruction.
The letter was sent from attorneys at Seattle firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner and from the First Liberty Institute, a conservative nonprofit legal group that litigates religious-related cases, on behalf of LifeWise.
It stated that a number of district policies — policies that prohibit LifeWise from participating in district events, distributing flyers inside schools, require permission slips for each absence and students to keep religious handouts sealed and placed in their backpack when returning to school — amounted to “unfair treatment.” The letter also stated that the comments and actions of the district’s Board of Directors “reflect an animus toward religion.”
Jennifer Philips McLellan, a parent at the district, told the school board Tuesday that “the majority do not want you to back down” and that the district has “exercised your legal right to set the boundaries which LifeWise is bound to follow, and you do so under the authority of both state and federal case law.”
“In short, you write the rules,” McLellan said. “If they want to continue to operate in Everett, they are legally expected to follow them.”
When McLellan asked those who supported the district in this matter to stand, nearly everyone in the packed board room did. A number of other community members, including a local rabbi and a former elementary school teacher, expressed concerns over LifeWise during public comment.
The letter gave the board a deadline of Dec. 5 to respond with written assurance that it would change its policies relating to off-campus religious instruction or the law firms would “advise LifeWise of all available legal remedies to protect its First Amendment rights.”
In a statement Wednesday, Jeremy Dys, a senior attorney at the First Liberty Institute, wrote that Everett Public Schools asked for an additional week to respond to the letter, and the institute provided the extra time. Dys wrote in an email that he is “hopeful the District will resolve the concerns we raised so the parents who would like their children to attend LifeWise may do so.”
“It’s shocking how angrily one or more board members and some community members have denounced the decision of parents in the District to seek release time religious instruction for their children and how adamant they are that these parents must be stopped by school officials from directing the religious education of their children,” Dys wrote.
Harmony Weinberg, a district spokesperson, wrote Thursday that the district’s legal counsel is in communication with the law firm about the letter.
“As a district, we follow all federal and state laws, as well as district policies and procedures, and the advice of legal counsel,” Weinberg wrote. “Parents have the right to request that their students be released during the school day for religious or non-religious reasons into the care of a named adult. The district does not oppose or endorse or partner with off-campus religious programs. Our priority is to maintain a safe, respectful learning environment for all students while honoring parents’ rights to make decisions about off-campus activities for their students.”
The letter stated that the board had “announced a new and more burdensome” excused-absence policy at its board meeting on Sept. 9, requiring parents to sign out their students to specific individuals each week.
But the board of directors took no action on any policies related to permission slips at that meeting, minutes from the meeting show, although board president Traci Mitchell did mention the permission slip requirement during her comments.
That policy was also not new, emails previously obtained by The Daily Herald through a public records request show. In October 2024, months before LifeWise had begun operating, district officials told LifeWise representatives that students would need to obtain permission slips for each absence for district records.
After the Nov. 19 letter to the district was made public, it garnered some national attention. The Secular Education Organization, an Ohio-based nonprofit founded in 2024 that opposes released-time religious instruction programs like LifeWise, wrote in an open letter to the Everett board of directors that “districts across the country are watching what you do next.”
“The District is being asked to relax rules that LifeWise agreed to before it ever received its first student in January 2025,” the organization wrote. “Those same rules are now being portrayed as ‘new’ or ‘burdensome.’ They are not. They are longstanding procedures the District established early on — and procedures LifeWise accepted without objection until they became inconvenient.”
The organization wrote that Everett Public Schools has “compelling grounds to reassess whether permitting RTRI (released-time religious instruction) is in the district’s best interests.”
The First Liberty Institute also issued a press release regarding the letter on Dec. 2, calling the board’s policies “draconian regulations.”
Both the Nov. 19 letter and later press release state that the school board has targeted LifeWise, citing comments board member Charles Adkins made at board meetings.
“It is difficult to conclude that the Board’s targeting of LifeWise is targeted by anything other than animus,” the letter read.
In a statement during Tuesday’s meeting, Adkins addressed the letter, stating he was speaking on his own behalf, not the board’s.
“I want to make it extremely, abundantly clear that yes, I do in fact hold animus toward LifeWise Academy, as do many of the parents and families who have reached out to this board,” Adkins said Tuesday.
At the meeting, Adkins called LifeWise “an organization of homophobic bullies” that are “active and willing participants in the efforts to bring about an authoritarian theocracy,” citing the organization’s growing ties to The Heritage Foundation.
“It is essential for us to have a very strong wall separating church and state,” Adkins said. “LifeWise and its supporters want to tear that wall down. We must do all we can to ensure that does not happen.”
In June, the foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, presented LifeWise with an “Innovation Prize,” which included financial support.
“This year’s Innovation Prize winners are doing what the Left fears most: telling the truth, defending the innocent, and rebuilding the institutions the radicals tried to burn down,” The Heritage Foundation wrote of the organizations, which included LifeWise Academy. “These are not just conservative organizations—they’re the tip of the spear in the fight to save the country.”
Project 2025, a proposed blueprint for reshaping the federal government, advocated for rescinding protections that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or transgender status.
In a “worldview statement” on LifeWise’s official website, the organization states that “God’s design for the gift of sex is for it to be exercised and enjoyed exclusively within the covenant relationship of marriage between one man and one woman.” It also states that “a person’s sex has been given as a gift from God and should not be altered.”
LifeWise’s curriculum is also used as part of a licensing agreement with LifeWay Christian Resources, a publishing entity of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant organization. The Southern Baptist Convention’s constitution prohibits churches from affirming, approving or endorsing homosexuality, and also passed a resolution in 2023 denouncing gender-affirming care.
Most health organizations, including the American Medical Association and American Psychological Association, say gender-affirming care is medically necessary. The American Medical Association states that transgender and nonbinary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression.
The co-directors of the LifeWise program near Emerson previously said that the organization does not teach about sexuality in its lessons and that the nonprofit welcomes children from all backgrounds. If children were to ask teachers specific questions about LGBTQ+ topics, the teacher would refer them to speak with their parents, the co-directors said.
At Tuesday’s meeting, board director Traci Mitchell said the board “does not support or endorse programs that provide off-campus religious instruction and prefer that students stay in school during the day,” and that the board’s primary focus is “a safe, respectful learning environment for all students, and respect for the rights of parents who choose to have their students participate in external, off-campus programs.”
As of Thursday, no legal action related to LifeWise has been filed against the district since the letter was sent, according to court records.
Will Geschke: 425-339-3443; william.geschke@heraldnet.com; X: @willgeschke.
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