LifeWise Threatens Everett WA School District with Lawsuit

Last week, Everett School District received a threat letter from a law firm representing LifeWise. With ridiculous demands and an impossible-to-meet deadline, the District will almost certainly be sued.

The threat letter claims that the District privileges secular organizations and that it demonstrates “an animus toward religion.” 

Let’s be very clear - there are no secular organizations taking children out of school and returning them during school hours at Emerson Elementary. So how can they be privileged? There are no secular organizations demanding custom-made procedures which violate child safety protocols either, but there is a religious organization taking kids out of school, and it is doing exactly that.

First, let’s also go through the process of an ordinary parent or guardian who wants a non-guardian adult to sign-out their child from school during normal school hours. The parent or guardian must – 

• notify the school that someone other than them will be taking their child out of school;

• name the adult who will be taking their child; 

• the named adult must sign-out the child (or each child if there are siblings) on a specific sign-out / sign-in sheet, which includes 

  • the date

  • child’s name

  • name of the adult

  • time of sign-out

  • time of sign-in;

• and, this must be done every single time a non-parent or non-guardian adult picks up their child(ren). (It should also be noted that parents and guardians must also sign each child out on the sign-out sheet as well should they pick them up during the school day.)

These child safety protocols are designed to keep kids, their adults, and even the school safe from harm.

By contrast, LifeWise has been granted a privileged process since the very beginning – instead of parents notifying the school each week, LifeWise sends parents pre-printed permission slips which can then be dated and signed weeks if not months in advance; and LifeWise provides a single sheet of paper with all of the children’s names on it for the entire day of pick-ups and drop-offs. They do not need to sign-out and sign-in each individual child. They just flip the preprinted page of names over and sign the back. And, as the result of a public records request, we have proof that they don’t even need to complete sign-out and sign-in for each group of kids; just one signature for sign-out and one signature for sign-in for the entire day. And, even though parents have been asked to identify which adult is picking the children up by circling the name of the adult on the permission slip, this procedure hasn’t been followed. And, for at least one full day of sign-outs, the person who signed the back of the single preprinted sheet wasn’t even on any of the permission slips; yet, they were apparently allowed to take children out of school. LifeWise is so privileged, they don’t even have to follow the bare minimum safety protocols, and have been doing it this way since the very start of the program in January of this year. 

But this privileged process is too much for LifeWise! LifeWise is demanding, through their law firm, that these scant child safety protocols, crafted especially for them, be abandoned because they are cumbersome. Yes, you read that right – child safety is too cumbersome for LifeWise staff and volunteers. 

The other demands in the threat letter are equally ridiculous, with most of the parameters that they are bemoaning put into place through a series of emails and meetings with school administrators before they ever started picking up children. And the deadline is impossible. The letter is dated November 19, and they demand the School Board notify them in writing by December 5 that policy and procedure will be amended especially for them at the next Board meeting, scheduled for December 9. LifeWise demands that the School Board circumvent the lawful public notice, comment, and hearing procedures required before a vote of the School Board.

We have no idea what the School Board will choose to do. While their decision-making in this matter thus far seems misguided – whether by fear or ignorance of the law – we hope that they will make a lawful decision. The decision we hope for, unfortunately, will result in a lawsuit if the demand letter from LifeWise legal counsel is in earnest. 

LifeWise Academy, in their decision to misrepresent reality and threaten the very district in which the local directors chose to enroll their children, has demonstrated their willingness to do exactly what we have accused them of – undermine public schools at any cost.

Read the threatening letter below.