The Wake County school board voted 6-1 Tuesday on final rules on religious instruction during the school day, as one group appears poised to take advantage of those rules for at least one Wake school.

Board Member Jennifer Job opposed the adoption because she believed it privileges religious people over nonreligious ones. Board Members Wing Ng and Toshiba Rice were absent from the meeting.

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It's one of two policy amendments approved Tuesday; the other concerns how schools will handle challenges to literature used in classroom lessons.

You can watch the meeting at the YouTube stream below.

After giving first approval earlier this month, the Wake school board gave final approval to a policy amendment that implements a new state requirement for all public schools: allowing students to be excused for one to four hours per week for religious instruction. Wake's new policy sets that allowance at the minimum required by the new state law, just one hour per week.

"Our charge is to educate children," Board Member Lynn Edmonds said Tuesday. "We cannot do that if children are not in school."

Several board members have said they didn't like the idea, citing concerns about peer pressure and children missing school. But they didn't change much of the district's proposed policy to implement it.

The change is occurring as schools across North Carolina have opened the door to Ohio-based LifeWise Academy, a Christian organization that is rapidly expanding across the country and whose model is designed to "reinstall" religious education into the public school day.

LifeWise Academy lists several schools where it has already launched programs in Nash County and says it's launching soon in Wake and Wilson counties.

It lists Willow Springs Elementary as a Wake County school where it plans to launch a program and says it's in the "planning phase" in the western and northeastern portions of the district. Elsewhere in the district, the group says it's still "rallying" support for programs.

A school system spokesman told WRAL News that neither the district nor the school is facilitating the arrangement. That's done between families and LifeWise.

Schools do require permission from every parent and guardian to allow someone other than themselves to pick their child up from school. That person must be named but doesn't go through a background check.

On Monday, LifeWise Academy told WRAL News it will launch at Willow Springs Elementary this fall and is only beginning discussions at other Wake schools. Transportation will be provided by bus or van, with students supervised by chaperones. LifeWise programming does include "a variety of fun incentives" for students throughout LifeWise programming, the spokesperson said, but it also urges programs to be mindful of any feedback they get from the schools they work with. Some LifeWsie chapters do hand out invitations for students to give their friends, asking them to join the program.

Students would need written consent from a parent or guardian to participate. The parent or guardian would need to request an excused absence each time and, as a part of that, confirm in writing each time that the student attended the religious instruction.

School board members have also expressed concern about students missing academic time to attend Bible lessons.

The proposed policy doesn't mention any restrictions around core subject areas. It says that religious instruction won't be allowed during state-required testing or remedial instruction.

"The student is responsible for making up all missed schoolwork," the new policy addition states.

What exactly that means depends on the teacher. Teachers set rules for how students with excused absences will makeup work.

The changes to the religious-based exemptions policy allows that one hour to count as an excused absence. Previously, such absences might have been counted as unexcused.

Board Vice Chairman Sam Hershey on Tuesday proposed adding language that requires the students to turn in any missed work that same day.

"This is the responsibility on the student and the family to ensure schoolwork is done and that they are not getting an extra day because they're leaving for released time religious instruction," he said.

Hershey backed off of that proposal after other board members and the board's attorney noted that other excused absences aren't treated that way. They cautioned against treating students leaving school for religious reasons any differently than other students.

"We can't have a situation where one type of excused absence for religious purposes has a different set of rules for," Board Member Chris Heagarty said. "That would be disparate treatment for religion."

Hershey said he didn't want to do that but raised questions about the extensions anyone with an excused absence might be getting.

"If athletes don't have to turn in their work when they leave early... I think that's a problem we should address as well," he said.

The board voted 9-0 Sept. 1 to give its first approval of the policy. Per board rules, all policies must be approved twice at two separate meetings before they can become official.

Students have long been able to leave school during the day for religious reasons, and it's established in U.S. Supreme Court precedent from decades ago. The new state law guarantees that at least one hour, but no more than four hours, per week can now be excused for religious instruction.

Religious instruction wasn't previously listed among the reasons a parent could excuse their child from school.

The difference between excused and unexcused can have a bearing on different things at the school level, such as a student's ability to qualify for recognition or participate in extracurriculars.

Objecting to supplementary materials

The school board also voted 6-1 to adopt changes to another policy change to the process for objecting to materials in schools, which will bring it in line with a new state law established in the recently passed state budget.

Board Member Cheryl Caulfield voted against the changes, though she supports parents' ability to challenge materials. She wanted more flexibility in the policy on how people could specify which books they didn't want their children to have access to.

The policy applies to any material used in classroom teaching, or optional material used for learning. It doesn't apply to library books not used in instruction. The district has another challenge process for that.

School districts, including Wake, generally already have a way to challenge instructional and supplementary materials, and the new state law replaces them.

The challenge must indicate the materials are "obscene," age-inappropriate, or inconsistent with academic standards. The new law, and Wake's proposed policy, establishes a new community media advisory board — replacing any current one — that would be made up of nine educators at all school levels and three parents at all school levels. The committee must reach a recommendation within two weeks of a challenge, and the school board would have the final say at its next meeting.

Several Wake school board members complained that the new law was vague in how it's written.

Current school board policy limits who can challenge books to parents and guardians, and the law changes that to any parent, guardian, teacher, student or resident of the district's geographic area.

During the board meeting earlier this month, Edmonds questioned how the district would feasibly determine residency for every material challenge.

"They actually should be from the county," Edmonds said.

District officials said Tuesday that the challenge form will ask people to provide their address and some form of proof for it, such as a utility bill or voter registration card.