A Washington school district will publicly apologize, retrain its board, and hand over $275,000 in attorney’s fees after policies pushed elementary students to keep Bibles and worksheets sealed away from classmates. LifeWise Academy announced the settlement Wednesday following a federal preliminary injunction in April.
Fox News Digital reported that the Everett School District faced a lawsuit over release-time Bible instruction that parents authorize off school property. LifeWise founder and CEO Joel Penton said the rules left kids feeling they had to conceal their faith.
The dispute sits at the center of a broader fight over whether public schools may burden voluntary religious programs that state and federal law already allow. District leaders now must post a written apology for six months and send board members through religious liberty training while updated student release guidelines take effect.
Penton told Fox News Digital that LifeWise had operated in Everett for several years and served dozens of students and families before the board changed course. He said officials replaced a simple one-time permission slip for a semester or year with a demand that parents hand-deliver a new slip every single week.
He described that weekly paperwork as onerous and said it was meant to shut the program down by stripping away the convenience that draws families in the first place. Parents enroll children so they can receive Bible education during the school day without rearranging work schedules around after-hours classes.
The sealed-envelope rule cut deeper. Students who received worksheets or a Bible at the off-campus program had to bring those materials back inside sealed envelopes so other students would not be “exposed” to them, Penton said. He relayed parent reports that children felt told to hide their faith, as if the materials were something to be ashamed of.
"I also heard from parents that 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 though it was something to be ashamed of, and I know that was very hurtful as well,"
Penton also said LifeWise was blocked from some community fairs while other student organizations could take part. He framed the pattern as pretty transparently discriminatory and an infringement on the religious liberty of the program and the families using it.
The New York Post likewise detailed the envelope mandate, the weekly slip requirement, the April injunction, and the settlement package of fees, training, apology, and guideline updates.
LifeWise first tried to resolve the dispute directly with school officials, then through an attorney, before filing suit. A federal judge granted a preliminary injunction against the district in April, according to LifeWise. Absolute calendar dates for the filing and the injunction order were not laid out beyond that April marker and the later Wednesday announcement.
Settlement terms require the district to pay $275,000 in attorney’s fees, put a public written apology on its website for six months, provide religious liberty training for school board members, and adjust practices tied to student release. Everett Public Schools told Fox News Digital there were no changes to “the policy,” while confirming the Student Release Guidelines were updated to comply with the settlement.
Religious liberty fights in education keep reaching higher courts, including a Louisiana classroom Ten Commandments challenge now aimed at the Supreme Court. Everett’s climb-down shows how quickly local rules can collapse once a federal judge signals the burden on voluntary faith instruction is too heavy.
The apology language, released through the settlement announcement, confronts comments made at board meetings. Directors and others had spoken about LifeWise in ways the district now calls offensive and hurtful to participating families.
"The District recognizes that comments made at various Board meetings that concerned LifeWise, including by Directors, were offensive and hurtful to the families participating in LifeWise programming. For that, the District and its Board of Directors offer a sincere apology."
Separately, Everett Public Schools posted a statement affirming that parents and guardians may seek release of students during the school day for religious-related activities or instruction off school property. The district pointed to District Policy 2340 and Procedure 2340P, saying those rules align with Washington’s RCW 28A.600.025 and with federal law the district must follow. The procedure allows an excused absence for part of the day when the instruction stays off-site and does not disrupt regular classroom time.
That statutory backdrop matters. Release-time Bible programs are not a novel experiment. They depend on parental consent, private funding, and instruction away from campus. When a district layers weekly in-person paperwork and sealed-envelope stigma on top of an already lawful option, families and providers read the message as hostility rather than neutral administration.
Parallel pressure on faith institutions appears in other enforcement settings, such as a Fourth Circuit order limiting warrantless ICE arrests at plaintiff churches under religious freedom law. Different facts, same core question: how far may government go before it crosses into burdening religious practice.
Stephanie Taub, senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, cast the deal as more than a local truce. She said religious discrimination has no place in public schools and called the outcome a tremendous victory for LifeWise and for religious release-time programs generally.
"Religious discrimination has no place in public schools. We are grateful to have reached this settlement on behalf of LifeWise. This is a tremendous victory not only for our clients but for all religious release time programs."
Penton, interviewed Thursday, kept returning to the human cost. Children treated Scripture packets like contraband. Parents forced into weekly logistical gymnastics. A program that had functioned for years suddenly framed as a contamination risk inside the schoolhouse. Those details, not abstract doctrine, drove the case.
Investigators and courts in similar disputes still must pin down exact policy text, enrollment numbers before and after restrictions, and any written rationale for barring a group from community events. Public materials described here do not quote the full sealed-envelope regulation line by line, name individual student plaintiffs, or list the fairs at issue. The settlement nonetheless locks in concrete remedies: money, training, a lasting public apology, and guideline edits the district itself acknowledges.
Parental authority over a child’s religious formation also surfaces in family-law rulings, including a decision where Maine’s highest court allowed a divorced father to limit his daughter’s church attendance. Everett is a public-school case, not a custody fight, yet both arenas test whether institutions may sideline a parent’s faith choices without clear legal grounding.
Everett continues to stress compliance. Its public statement walks through the right to off-site religious instruction, the off-campus requirement, and the ban on disrupting core class time. Officials draw a line between “the policy,” which they say remains unchanged, and the Student Release Guidelines, which they updated for the settlement.
That distinction will face practical scrutiny from parents who lived under the weekly-slip and envelope regime. If the old hurdles disappear in daily administration, the program can again function as a convenient, parent-directed option. If informal barriers linger, further conflict remains possible even after fees are paid and the apology sits on the website.
National dockets keep filling with related questions. The Supreme Court’s November slate includes religious discrimination matters alongside other controversies, a reminder that local school fights rarely stay local once constitutional lines are drawn.
The path here was familiar to religious-liberty litigators. Attempted negotiation, attorney outreach, a lawsuit, a preliminary injunction, then a settlement that extracts training and a public admission of hurtful board rhetoric. Taxpayers cover $275,000 in fees. Board members sit for religious liberty instruction. Families who felt shamed receive a written institutional apology visible for half a year.
LifeWise presents the result as vindication of a simple model: private Bible teaching, parental permission, instruction off school property, minimal disruption to the academic day. District rhetoric now matches that legal baseline more closely than the practices Penton described. Whether culture inside board meetings matches the new paperwork is the next test, and it will be measured by how freely parents can opt in without stigma or red tape.
Funding disputes tied to faith status continue elsewhere, including a Liberty University student’s Supreme Court push over federal grant conditions aimed at religious affiliation. Different forum, same demand that government stop treating religious participation as a problem to manage rather than a freedom to respect.
Public schools serve every family, including families who want Scripture study during a release period the law already permits. When officials answer that request with sealed envelopes and weekly permission gauntlets, they invite exactly the injunction and price tag Everett now owns. Constitutional order is not optional just because a Bible fits in a child’s backpack.
