Oklahoma has codified the right for students to receive religious instruction during school hours for years, but House Bill 1425, which recently passed the state Senate 38-7, effectively provides the guidebook to school districts on how to implement a religious release program properly.
The bill also requires local school districts to set up standards for approving certain religious programs for students to receive credit. If programs meet the standards, the districts would be compelled to approve them for credit, but the district also cannot bar a program if it does not meet those standards; in that case, a student could attend the program but not receive credit.
Joel Penton, founder and CEO of LifeWise Academy, a national organization that provides Bible education to public school students during release time hours, told the, “Really no matter what your view of the separation of church and state, you should be supportive of this type of program because it is so clearly separate from public schools.”
“There’s a lot of families that the Bible is really important to them and as we can see, there’s many families that choose to send their kids to private, religious school so that they can have religious education,” Penton said. “But that’s not necessarily feasible for everybody and so there’s a lot of families that want to implement it. And that’s what they’re hoping to achieve, to pass along these values to their students.