The Government Is Threatening a Christian School That Serves Children with Learning Disabilities

Crosspoint Church in Florida wasn’t anticipating starting a school.

But in 2013, a woman who was attending the church approached the pastor, Reverend Michael Lindsey, with a donation and a request. She wanted to do something to serve children in the community. Within weeks, the church launched a summer care program, advertising it at local elementary schools.

It was a hit.

Around 50 kids signed up for the first week. Soon, parents were approaching Rev. Lindsey. They felt their kids weren’t thriving in public schools and were looking for another option.

By mid-July, the church was ready to launch Englewood Christian School and open it to students that fall.

“Everything fell into place,” Rev. Lindsey said. “We felt the Lord was behind it.”

And the Lord has sustained and grown the school. What started in the 2013-14 school year with 15 students has grown to 52 students today.

What makes Englewood Christian School special is that it focuses on individualized learning and offers the flexibility to tailor the learning environment to the needs of its students. Many of the students are facing a learning disability of some kind and have fallen behind in the public school system.

But now Sarasota County is standing in the way of this school’s good work. In 2016, the county informed the church that it needed a special permit in order to operate. And when it applied for that special permit, it was denied.

That was startling news. Englewood Christian School had every reason to believe that its application would be approved – especially considering that charter schools in Florida are permitted to operate in any church. But, apparently, religious schools like Englewood Christian School don’t get the same treatment.

That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Crosspoint Church and Englewood Christian School – to protect the students they serve.

This school is a benefit to the church and the surrounding community. In particular, the students have thrived at Englewood Christian School. But don’t take my word for it. Just read these stories of transformation.

A seventh grade boy came to Englewood Christian School from a public school, where he had been tested and placed in a resource room. There, because he was older, he became the teacher’s helper. He had not been able to advance past a third grade reading level. At Englewood, his reading level advanced two years in his first year. The next year, he was fully caught up. He will be graduating on time with a regular diploma.

An eighth grade boy who was severely withdrawn and is on medication that makes him sleepy started attending Englewood Christian School. He hadn’t been speaking or interacting with anyone at the public schools. Englewood Christian School, however, is able to accommodate his schedule. He can take breaks during the day when his medication makes him tired. And in-class activities and one-on-one time with teachers have helped him to open up. Now, he is an active contributor in class, and he interacts with the other students.

A female student on the autism spectrum came to the school lagging four grades behind. With the help of the teachers, she has successfully caught up to the grade she should be in.

Those are just a few of the success stories that have come from Englewood Christian School. But if the county is permitted to continue treating religious schools worse than secular schools, these kids and their families will lose.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that a county has tried to use local zoning codes to target churches and religious schools.

In fact, ADF has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case on behalf of a school in Ohio, Tree of Life Christian School. There, city officials have used zoning codes to block Tree of Life from using a building that it bought in order to consolidate its four campuses and expand.

The good news for both Englewood Christian School and Tree of Life Christian School is that federal law prohibits the government from using its zoning codes to single out religious institutions and treat them worse than everyone else. Not to mention that the U.S. Supreme Court has already ruled that the government cannot treat religious organizations and individuals as second-class citizens.

But that is exactly what is happening in Sarasota County, Florida – all at the expense of the children and families that Englewood Christian School serves.

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How Do We Make College More Affordable?

For weeks, I’ve been writing about the problems with college and the way it’s financed. That was easy. Finding solutions is the hard part.

First of all, let’s stipulate that there are plenty of ways to get an education. If you just want to learn for the sake of learning, there are plenty of colleges that post their lectures online FOR FREE! You can download Kindle editions of the great works of literature for a couple of bucks each. I once subscribed to a course that emailed me little mini lessons every day. I enjoyed the one on Art History immensely.

There are also plenty of ways to get job training at low costs. You can go to the welding school here in Atlanta for about $9000 and graduate in six months making more money than I will ever hope to make. There are technical colleges. You can join the military. Many employers will pay for college classes.

If you want to earn an actual 4 year degree, there are cheaper ways to do it than Harvard. Start with 2 years at a community college and then transfer. The College Level Examination Program (or “CLEP”) offers online courses for a fraction of the cost. State colleges and universities are far less expensive than private ones.

But with all of those options available, there are still students and parents willing to borrow thousands of dollars for a degree. And why shouldn’t they? Last week’s bribery scandal revealed that some feel that a college diploma is worth spending thousands of dollars just to get your kid admitted (or, if you’re Jared Kushner’s dad, it was worth a $2.5 million donation to Harvard.)

Jonah Goldberg posted an interesting question last week: would you rather have the Yale diploma without the education, or the education without the diploma? Most people would take the diploma, no question. Because education for the sake of education is a wonderful thing, but that piece of paper is what opens the job opportunities.

Changing our culture is going to be difficult. If you grew up in the 80’s like I did, every sitcom had what I called the “Mikey goes to college” episode. The plot rarely varied. The slacker kid that did poorly in school would ponder skipping college to get job. Mom and Dad would have a cow and insist kid go to college. After all, Mom was usually a lawyer and Dad was a doctor, so they could afford to pay tuition without going into debt. Nobody ever stopped to question whether or not Mikey actually NEEDED to go to college. Ultimately, slacker kid always made the “right” decision. And, if the show stayed on the air long enough, he was eventually shown with his cap and gown at his college graduation, thanking his parents for showing him the right way.

A lot of young people today ARE turning away from the college path. But it’s a hard thing for parents who were raised in the “college for all” mentality to let go of that image. That’s one of the reasons I ended up in debt. I realized at 20 as my sophomore year was ending that I didn’t know what I was doing. I liked school and was making good grades, but I had no earthly idea what I wanted to “do with my life” or what degree to pursue to make that happen. I suggested to my parents that I take some time off. I had a summer job that I enjoyed and they offered me a full time position. My parents hit the roof. My dad told me in no uncertain terms that I WOULD be staying in college. After he died, I knew that my graduating was his last wish and did what I had to do to make it happen. It turned out to be a poor decision. When I finally graduated 2 1/2 years later, I was thousands of dollars in debt and my first job payed the exact same salary I had been offered earlier. Imagine if I had chosen to keep working instead? Then I wouldn’t be whining here about how much student loan debt ruined my life.

We don’t do people a favor by letting them take on more debt than they can afford. I bought a new house last year, and my real estate agent thought it would be a good idea to by the new house first, move and THEN try to sell my old house empty. I qualified for the mortgage, but the underwriters scuttled the deal. They felt that I couldn’t carry the mortgage AND pay taxes, utilities, etc. on both houses. Which was true! And what if the old house DIDN’T sell right away?

Maybe student loans should be assessed the same way. Instead of just allowing students to borrow any amount deemed “necessary,” maybe someone should sit down and consider how much the student was likely to earn and whether the loan amount would be manageable. After all, $100K loan is not unreasonable if you’re going into law or medicine. But it’s far too much if you’re majoring in Women’s Studies or Art History. Maybe there should be a maximum cap on borrowing. Because why WOULDN’T colleges keep raising tuition charges if the loan program defines “need” as the gap between what the college charges and what the student can pay?

Democrats of course have a solution for all of this: make college free! But the problem with that is there is no such thing as “free.” What they really mean when they say “college should be free” is that “Congress should take money away from taxpayers who have earned it and use that money to pay tuition for every kid with a pulse.”

It’s easy for conservatives to mock the kids complaining about there debt and dismiss them with “Well, you shouldn’t have done that.” But as I pointed out before, it’s YOUR problem because YOU guaranteed those loans as a US taxpayer! It won’t help our society for conservative parents to scrimp and save and send their kids to community college if liberals are allowed to borrow with abandon. In fact, nothing will make the inequities in our society worse than having one class of people forego colleges due to the expense, while another relies on the taxpayers to fund it.

Government subsidies have contributed to the escalating cost of college. Pouring more money into it will just make the problem worse. Economics 101 shows that the more you subsidize something, the higher the price rises. (So, at least I learned something in college.)

The Brookings Institute has proposed a “risk sharing” program that would require colleges to have “skin in the game.” This would require the colleges themselves to repay part of the money if the student defaults. You can read the details here: https://www.brookings.edu/research/a-risk-sharing-proposal-to-hold-higher-ed-institutions-accountable-to-their-students/

Personally, I think we should turn off the tap. The government shouldn’t be in the student loan business at all. Banks would take a much more sensible approach to lending if the loans weren’t guaranteed by the government. And colleges would have to figure out how to make their products affordable if the government quit subsidizing them with student loans. It’s called the “free market.”

Apprenticeships would be another solution. Businesses that need workers with certain skills could pay for that training in exchange for the worker being contractually obligated for a set time period.

If the government DOES finance education, it should at least be for the skills that we need. We need nurses. We need engineers. We’d get a much better payoff in this state if we devoted all the proceeds from the Hope Scholarship towards funding GA Tech than from what we’re doing now. Society as a whole benefits from a more educated population. Nobody benefits from entitled students running up thousands of dollars of debt for worthless degrees.

And if we DON’T come up with some workable proposals, the liberals will eventually win with their “free college” proposal. Then we’ll all be direct funding the elite indoctrination centers instead of just underwriting the loans.

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Australia: Another young man tossed out of his college following a rape allegation

Bettina Arndt

I’m tackling serious stuff in my YouTube video this week – another young man tossed out of his college following a rape allegation.



This one happened a few years ago at the University of Western Australia. You will see from my interview with the male student in question – I’ve called him ‘Nathan’ – that he readily admits didn’t handle his sexual relationship with his new girlfriend very well. The relationship was only a few weeks old, his girlfriend clearly had sexual issues. But the appallingly biased handling of the inquiry by his college  gave him no opportunity for a fair hearing, he was given no legal advice before being expelled from college after his girlfriend, led on by her feminist friends, misrepresented what happened between them.

Here is the classic believe-the-victim scenario which has led to so many American college students winning big legal payouts due to a university’s failure to protect their due process rights.

I have absolutely no doubt this is now happening at universities across Australia. Last year I made a video with a PhD student at Adelaide University who was pursued by a university committee following rape allegations. I will be making further videos regarding a number of similar cases I am following up at the moment – in some I need to wait for the completion of legal action before going public.

Listen up, people. This is happening on our watch. We are allowing our universities to be bullied into getting involved in adjudicating these criminal matters, using grossly unfair semi-judicial processes which have no place in institutes of higher learning.

I’m currently preparing a detailed letter to send to all members of the University of Sydney Senate, urging them to  seek a proper explanation from the administration as to why the University is embarking on this course. I am providing them with detailed evidence of the huge costs and damage to the reputations of American colleges from becoming involved in such matters, explaining that the Trump administration is now acting to restore due process rights on campus. 

As members of the governing body of the university, I will be urging these people to make it their business to thoroughly investigate how the administration proposes to avoid the expensive and damaging likely consequences of this move and suggesting they seek legal advice on the desirability and consequences of this new direction.

I’m hopeful that the large, varied group included in the Senate will include some independent folk prepared to start asking tough questions. I’m starting with Sydney Uni because I am still awaiting news of their investigation of my complaint about the violent protest against me last year.

I’ll be following up with similar letters to board members at other universities, initially targeting those we know to have introduced regulations regarding this issue. But since I know of two cases at UWA which does not appear to have officially moved in this direction, I suspect similar cases are happening under the radar at campuses across Australia.

Email from Tina -- bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au