LifeWise Academy is a growing Christian education program that is giving public school students in Brownsburg Bible education during school hours.
Impacting Brownsburg since 2024, LifeWise Academy currently serves sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Brownsburg East and West middle schools and fourth and fifth graders at Reagan and Lincoln elementary schools.
LifeWise Academy is a Christian nonprofit organization that provides Bible education classes to public school students during the school day. Students who participate in the program leave school through a time-release program where they go off their school campus to a separate location for their instruction.
LifeWise Academy is a time-release Bible education class offered to public school students. Under the 1952 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Zorach v. Clauson, LifeWise Academy must be off school property, funded privately and have parent permission.
LifeWise Academy instruction happens one day a week, when students are picked up from school with transportation provided and go to a host site for their lesson. This lasts about 45 to 50 minutes. For elementary students, their program is done during their recess and lunch time, and for middle school students, their program is during their special elective. “Typically, how elementary students attend is during recess and lunch, or they would end up missing one special class every week, and that is unfortunately the same special all year. For example, if we pick up our fourth and fifth graders on Tuesdays and that is their music day, because they have a different special every day of the week, they would always miss music. For the middle school kids, they get to attend LifeWise Academy during their specials classes, but they have the same one all week. My son’s a sixth grader; he has choir every single day, so when he attends LifeWise on Fridays, he just misses one of his choir classes out of the five. Dr. Kat Jessup, the Brownsburg Community School Corporation superintendent, has given LifeWise Academy permission to go to all schools. It just takes a lot of people and money, so I’m happy to continue to grow the program, but hopefully we can expand to more grades in the schools we’re serving, and then from there, we would like to reach out to more elementary schools,” says Maggie Andrews, representing the Brownsburg LifeWise Academy chapter.
LifeWise Academy is completely free for students to attend, and there is no financial burden on parents.
LifeWise Academy is funded through a program called Trust Funding, but people can sponsor LifeWise Academy and donate to the program. The average cost of LifeWise Academy is about $30 per child a month to attend the program. Churches and small businesses can also help sponsor LifeWise Academy.
“With our name LifeWise Academy, everyone automatically assumes that we are a school, but we are a nonprofit program. There are some misconceptions about what we teach, and we teach Jesus is the hero of every Bible story. We teach a nondenominational curriculum, and we are not tied or affiliated to any type of specific denomination. All of our teachings come just straight from the Christian Standard Bible. The program can be completed in four years, so if a student goes from fourth grade to eighth grade, they would essentially have completed all the curriculum courses. One thing that we always advertise to parents is this is not a grade. You do not need to worry about homework or anything like that. The curriculum is different for every age. We teach the elementary program to our elementary students and the middle school program to the middle schoolers. The program just got expanded into high schools, but we do not offer that yet at Brownsburg High School, but we would love to in the future,” says Andrews.
To get involved with LifeWise Academy, people can donate and volunteer their time. For more information regarding Brownsburg’s specific LifeWise Academy chapter, visit lifewise.org/program/1801020-brownsburg-community-school-corp.
“Overall, we need community support through funding and volunteering. We need community involvement for LifeWise Academy to grow and for more people to be reached with the gospel. The way that these programs stay strong is through community involvement. Parents can enroll their child on the website and can sign up to receive newsletters and program information. On the website, people can also sign up to be a volunteer or to be an ambassador. Ambassadors are people in the community who are willing to pass out information and help spread awareness about LifeWise Academy at community events. And on the website, people can find out how to be a financial donor,” says Andrews.
Comments 1
Big class there in the picture, 3 adults and 2 children. No reporting on how many students attend?