Denise Konkle said she didn’t know much about LifeWise Academy, a Bible-based program for public school students, when she started talking with a friend about it late last year.
But Konkle and her friend, Bev Kiesler, were interested. And less than a year later, they and others got a local LifeWise program off the ground in Floyd County, with plans to grow.
The initial students, first and second graders at Greenville Elementary School started classes a few weeks ago. They go for 40 minutes once a week to learn about the Bible and “Living LifeWise” character traits, like gratitude, respect and obedience.
Konkle said she thinks it’s important to bring this type of learning to students who might not otherwise have the opportunity.
“I just think that our children today… are needing to have hope about and understand that there is a God that loves them,” she said.
The program takes place during school hours, but state law says it has to happen off campus. It also can’t be publicly funded and parents have to opt in.
But a local advocacy group worries the LifeWise program takes students away from other studies, excludes other students and threatens the separation of church and state.
“When religious instruction enters the public school day, it creates an environment where children may feel excluded, pressured, or judged based on their participation or non-participation,” Do Something Southern Indiana members said in a statement.
How it works
LifeWise Academy, a nonprofit based in Ohio, was founded in 2018. According to its website, it follows orthodox Christian beliefs, but seeks to “avoid discussions about denominational differences.”
The organization’s website says it “recognizes that the Bible was foundational to the forming of our society,” and that it’s open to students of all religious backgrounds.
The LifeWise structure provides steps for people to set up programs in their communities, with the lead organization providing curriculum and other support, like insurance.
“They have developed really this plug-and-play program where… they provide the program and we provide the boots on the ground here in our community to make it work,” said Konkle, who is a board member with the New Albany-Floyd County LifeWise.
Konkle is also a Republican Floyd County Council member, and said she’s planning not to run for re-election so she can focus on the LifeWise program.
There appears to be interest in working with LifeWise in other Southern Indiana school districts, as well.
According to the LifeWise website, people have taken steps toward starting local programs in districts including Clarksville Community Schools, Community Montessori, Greater Clark County Schools, Rock Creek Community Academy and Silver Creek School Corp.
The Borden-Henryville Community School Corp. is in its second year of the program, according to the Borden-Henryville LifeWise group’s Facebook page.
In Floyd County, there are about 20 Greenville first and second graders in the program as of this week. Konkle said they have plans to start at Georgetown Elementary next year, and want to expand to every elementary school in the New Albany Floyd County Schools district within five years.
“Things have definitely been moving fast in Floyd County,” Victoria Thornsberry, program director at the New Albany-Floyd County chapter, said. “Doors have just been wide open.”
She said she knows not every family can get to church, a place she said helped her when she was growing up.
“So this just gives parents another opportunity to add that into their child's life,” she said.
Thornsberry said they can’t host classes on school property, or fundraise within schools. But schools can decide whether to allow LifeWise affiliates to get the word out through other means, such as sending information home with students or advertising in newsletters.
The program is still new, but Thornsberry said after the second week of classes earlier this month that students are already enjoying it.
“They were just so excited, and they…didn't want to go back to school,” she said.
Courts, lawmakers pave way for religious instruction
In 1952, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Zorach v. Clausen that public school students could leave campus during school hours to receive religious education.
And last year, Indiana state lawmakers passed a measure changing language from giving school administrators the option of allowing students to leave school for religious instruction, to saying they “shall” allow it.
“If we would have gone last year, it would have been up to the principal and up to the superintendent and school board,” Thornsberry said. “But now, they have to allow us to come in, but we also have to adhere to being flexible and not disruptive.”
According to the law, the programs must work with school officials “to
ensure the period or periods in which the student receives religious
instruction are the least disruptive to the instructional time…of the student.”
New Albany Floyd County Schools Superintendent Travis Madison said members of the New Albany-Floyd County LifeWise program contacted him earlier this year. He said they worked together to plan the time students would leave school to go to LifeWise, and how parental consent would work.
He said the local group also provided information on the curriculum.
“But ultimately, they don't need our approval or any of that stuff,” Madison said. “It's all up to the parents that signed their kids up for the program.”
He said if they felt like things weren't set up appropriately, they could “probably raise some red flags or ask some serious questions," he said.
He said the school doesn’t provide any facilities or transportation for the program. But it gives LifeWise the same opportunity to be in school newsletters and flyers, and to participate in open house, as other groups.
Madison said he’s received some calls and emails from people “adamantly against it.”
“We're not promoting it. We're not talking against it,” he said. “The school is strictly staying on pretty much a neutral side of this.”
Kathy Collings is on the steering committee for Do Something Southern Indiana, a community advocacy group that has also protested the rise in local United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement detentions, specifically after the Clark County jail came online as an ICE holding facility.
She said she was familiar with LifeWise through other activist work and her connection with Kentucky Citizens for Democracy, which is opposed to the partnership between LifeWise and Oldham County Schools.
She said she understands the program is legal, based on Indiana laws, but she has concerns.
“Do I agree with those laws? No. Do I think there should be a better wall from separation of church and state? Yes,” she said.
She said that's especially true since Indiana has vouchers that allow families to send their children to get religious education at private schools.
“The separation of church and state is not an abstract principle—it is a fundamental constitutional protection that ensures our public schools remain welcoming and inclusive for all students, regardless of their family's religious beliefs or lack thereof,” group leaders wrote in a statement sent to LPM News and published as a letter to the editor in the News and Tribune.
Collings said the group spoke out of concern that LifeWise has been quietly introduced, without public discussion with parents or the school board. She herself learned about it through news coverage.
She said her group also wants to educate the public on the program. They hosted a community event last weekend in New Albany.
“We're just trying to make sure that there is transparency and legal compliance in the schools and that people are informed as to what this is,” she said of the organization.
Thornsberry said under the Indiana law, they did not have to get anything approved through the school board.
The law says principals must allow students to attend religious instruction off-campus after a parent provides notice. It doesn’t require any sort of public notice or discussion.
In responding to the group’s statement on transparency, Thornsberry, the New Albany-Floyd County LifeWise program director, said she provides weekly updates to parents on what they're learning in class.
She said the program is important for character-building and “it gives children and people…hope.”
Coverage of Southern Indiana is funded, in part, by Samtec Inc., the Hazel & Walter T. Bales Foundation, and the Caesars Foundation of Floyd County.
