More than 100 Ohio school districts add LifeWise Academy in 2025
Hilliard-based religious instruction program operates in 34 states and plans to enroll nearly 100,000 public school students this school year
By Megan Henry
The Ohio Capital Journal
COLUMBUS — LifeWise Academy, a controversial Hilliard-based religious instruction program, expanded to more than 100 Ohio school districts this year.
LifeWise is operating in more than 260 of the state’s 607 districts. It plans to be in about 300 school districts across the state by the end of the school year.
In January, LifeWise was in about 160 Ohio school districts, making its growth this year a 62.5% increase.
LifeWise Academy, a controversial Hilliard-based religious instruction program, expanded to more than 100 Ohio school districts this year.
LifeWise is operating in more than 260 of the state’s 607 districts. It plans to be in about 300 school districts across the state by the end of the school year.
In January, LifeWise was in about 160 Ohio school districts, making its growth this year a 62.5% increase.
This growth comes as Ohio school districts are now required to have a religious release time policy, which has helped pave the way for an expansion of LifeWise Academy.
The new law took effect in April. Previously, the law merely permitted a religious release time policy.
“The new release time religious education law in Ohio clarifies the rights for schools and parents to offer release time programs like LifeWise making the path to implementing these programs more straightforward for many districts,” LifeWise said in a statement to the Ohio Capital Journal.
LifeWise is in 31 states and is approved to launch in six more states by the end of 2026. The nonprofit hopes to reach 100,000 students nationally in 2026.
While critics of LifeWise are not surprised by the growth because of the new Ohio law, they have concerns.
According to Education Week, at least 12 states require school districts to offer religious release time upon a parent’s request: Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kentucky, Montana, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin.
“It doesn’t seem like people are necessarily interested when you have to go change the laws because schools are telling you no and you’re taking that option away from them,” said Zach Parrish, a parent who had LifeWise file a lawsuit against him. “Of course, you’re going to grow.”
Parrish now lives in Indiana, but his daughter was a student in Defiance City Schools in Northwest Ohio and she was bullied and ostracized for not attending LifeWise.
The United States Supreme Court upheld release time laws during the 1952 Zorach v. Clauson case, which allowed a school district to have students leave school for part of the day to receive religious instruction.
Religious release time instruction must meet three criteria: the courses must take place off school property, be privately funded, and students must have parental permission.
Northeast Ohio
LifeWise started a program at Vermilion Schools in Northeast Ohio this fall after the school district originally said no to LifeWise back in 2023, said Kitty Schwanitz, an organizer for the Secular Education Association.
“If religion needs to be such a big part of their life, I think that they should take their kid to church, to Sunday school,” Schwanitz said. “I just think that local, organic religious instruction on parents time is best.”
The program in Vermilion currently only has three elementary students in it, she said.
“It can’t be sustainable when you’re running numbers that low,” Parrish said.
Schwanitz said some parents don’t know what they are getting into when they agree to let their children go to LifeWise.
“A lot of (parents) aren’t looking at the fine print of what they’re signing up for,” she said. “And when they do they realize what their kids are being taught, and then they have to pull their kids, their kids are crying, and then they’re getting bullied. … It breaks my heart every time I read a story about another kid who is being bullied.”
Schwanitz said her high school twins are not religious.
“I really wanted my children to be raised without any pressure from any kind of religious organization at all,” she said. “A group like LifeWise would absolutely want to target my kids.”
Casey Bellis used to attend St. Mary Catholic Church in Vermilion, but was told by the pastor she was no longer welcome there after she started questioning why the pastor supported LifeWise. Now, she attends St. Peter Catholic Church in Huron.
“Our pastor there is very much against (LifeWise),” Bellis said.
St. Peter’s Pastor Rev. J. Douglas Garand wrote a letter to the parish in 2024 saying the church does not support LifeWise.
“Let the local churches educate the member children of their communities of faith, in the ways of faith,” he wrote in the letter.
Northwest Ohio
Matt Hollar’s daughters used to attend LifeWise at a Northwest Ohio school district.
“My older daughter — she was probably eight at the time, maybe nine — came home reciting Old Testament scripture, not understanding the ‘strict’ meaning, and certainly not capable at that age of interpreting a deeper meaning” Hollar said.
His daughter also told him she learned at LifeWise that the 2022 Pixar movie “Turning Red” was “against God’s teachings and should not be watched because it was focused on worshiping false idols.”
“I didn’t agree and also thought it suggested that they were teaching my children at a very young age to question their own beliefs, and those I was trying to instill,” he said.
“LifeWise makes it very clear in their own material that if the parents’ belief systems differ from LifeWise, the students are to assume that LifeWise is right and their parents, and anyone else, are wrong.”
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