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A Letter to Superintendents and Principals of Public Schools

A Letter to Superintendents and Principals of Public Schools to Consider Using A Curriculum Developed by Enlighten Education Co-operative – February 2025

Dear Principal,

As you may know, there is a growing interest among parents of the children entrusted to your care, that these students get at least a cursory exposure to the literature that for centuries has been the source of purpose and values in life.

Our organization, Enlighten Education Co-op, has created a tool to help you fulfill this need. It consists of a survey in three parts of comparative religions and outlines of Old and New Testament literature. It meets court guidelines of having secular purpose and neither promotes nor denigrates any particular religion.

Our organization stands ready to provide your teachers with suggestions on how to implement this curriculum into elective courses for high school students. We have placed the curriculum into the public domain and is available to download from our website for your review.

Children today are often left without a moral compass with which to navigate the challenges of modern society. It is so important that we allow them a safe place to have relaxed discussions of the questions that have interested generations of people from all over the world.

The Old and New Testaments of the Bible as the world’s best-selling book and having a major influence on our culture should not be a mystery to our young people. Its stories and history have traditionally been discussed as a means of people developing their own world views that give guidance to their lives.

Our public schools can provide a safe place for our students to consider ideas without any pressure to accept any particular doctrine. I hope you will contact us so that together we can help to fill this important need. Thank you,

William Bronson. MA, MTS, DMin – 239 940 6080

President of EEC – www.EnlightenEducationCo-op.org

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January 2025

www.EnlightenEducationCo-Op.org

2805 East 5th Street Lehigh Acres, Florida 33972

Dear Friend, 

About seven years ago, I started Enlighten Education Co-op, a Florida LLC. I saw a need to help youngsters who were trying to get an education in public schools. The current social and educational environment makes that difficult for all the reasons we all know too well.

One idea we came up with was to raise money to hire retired teachers on a part-time basis and offer them as teacher assistants to school districts. Today’s teachers need help, and most would value having another adult in their classrooms. However, I was unsuccessful in raising enough money to fund this initiative. Our organization, EEC, is still willing and able to coordinate this initiative with school districts that request us to do that, but they would need to pay these retired teachers and others as they do now in many cases.

More recently, I created a curriculum that would re-introduce religious studies into the classrooms. It follows guidelines set by the courts regarding secular purpose, no undue entanglement of church and state, and neither promotes nor denigrates any particular religious world view.

For several generations, religion in general and the Bible in particular have not been studied in public schools in America. This has left a huge hole in children’s understanding of the traditional bases for finding meaning and values in life. Religion and the Bible have played a large role in the minds of western leaders, writers, musicians, artists, academics, and politicians. Without this knowledge, our students have been set adrift in a world distracted by materialism and entertainment without a moral compass.

The curriculum that I created to address this deficit can be found on our website at www.EnlightenEducationCo-op.org. along with a Sense of Congress Resolution that addresses these issues. I have put the curriculum into public domain so that any school district may incorporate it into their academics with or without changes at no cost.

Our organization, EEC, stands ready to assist and facilitate in any way any school districts that want to use this curriculum and/or our services in this regard. To do so, however, we must raise enough money to pay our staff. The amount of money we can raise will relate directly to the extent and speed at which this initiative will be accomplished. I assure you that it will be carefully and wisely spent. The by-laws of our organization are also available on our website and are designed to provide the transparency, efficiency, and scalability of this project.

Contributions are not tax deductible in that we have transitioned from our former status as a 501c3. Please consider donating to this cause because we will all benefit from having future citizens well informed in matters traditionally deemed necessary by our founders to the survival of our Republic.

Donations can be made on our website or sent to Enlighten Education Co-op, 2805 E. 5th Street, Lehigh Acres, Florida, 33972. Feel free to call me on my cell for any further information at 239 940 6080. Please forward (BCC) this request to any of your friends. Thank you so much!  William Bronson

“do justice, love kindness, walk humbly…”

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Remarks of William Bronson to Lee County School Board 19 November 2024

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I will be leaving four documents with the School Board. 

The first is a 110-page curriculum for teaching religion. It is in three parts, a survey of world religions, and surveys of Old Testament and New Testament literature. It conforms to the requirements set by the courts as having a secular purpose, creates no undue entanglement between church and state, and neither promotes nor denigrates any religious worldview.

The second document is a rationale for teaching religion in public schools.

The third is a Guideline for doing so prepared by the First Amendment Center now under the auspices of the Freedom Forum in Washington DC.

And the fourth is an endorsement by the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

There is a growing consensus that removing the study of religion in public schools has had the unintended consequence of minimizing its importance to a well-rounded education and its basis for a sense of meaning and discipline among students. Litigation over how this is done has caused public school administrators to take a cautious approach and generally abandon attempts to address this difficult issue regarding the separation of church and state.

I would advise the board to take a proactive approach to this and adopt a method of handling this issue within the parameters set by the courts. Our curriculum does that and we’ve put it into the public domain and is available to anyone from our website. It deserves your careful consideration.

Our organization is available for consulting on implementation strategies and other issues.

William Bronson, MA, MTS, DMin
President, Enlighten Education Co-op, Inc.
239 940 6080

Mr. Bronson’s presentation to the Lee County School Board:

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November 12, 2024

Dear Team Members and Friends, 

I am posting this Sense of Congress Resolution that I hope you will bring to the attention of your members of Congress and encourage them to sponsor and support this measure that will give encouragement to those school districts that may want to use our curriculum. Let me know of your success in this initiative. Thanks, 

William Bronson, MA, MTS, DMin
President, Enlighten Education Co-op, Inc.

Sense_of_Congress_ResolutionDownload
TheBiblePublicSchoolsAFirstAmendmentGuideDownload
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1 November 2024

Dear Friends of Enlighten Education Co-op,

I’m happy to announce that I finished a 110 page curriculum for teaching the Bible in the public schools that meets the guidelines set by the courts regarding separation of church and state issues in that it has a secular purpose and neither promotes nor denigrates any particular religious world view. It is in three parts, one: A Survey of Comparative Religions; two: A Survey of the Old Testament, and three: A Survey of the New Testament. 

I attach it here along with A Rationale for a Bible Curriculum.

Please give me feedback on this material and also my proposed strategy of putting it into the public domain. In other words, I think we should make it free to any school districts that want to use it. Our organization can promote the curriculum and charge consulting fees for helping districts implement it. I believe this is the best way to get the material before students in a timely way while leaving the door open for EEC to gain income on the consulting process.

Thanks for your continued encouragement. Please forward these two documents widely among friends and acquaintances, especially if they are connected to public education.

School superintendents can offer this material as elective courses or incorporate it into existing courses in history, literature, social studies, etc. I am available to any news organizations that may be interested in hearing more about this topic.

William Bronson MA, MTS, DMin
President, Enlighten Education Co-op, Inc. (EEC)
239 940 6080

ACLU Statement on First Amendment

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Teacher Assistant Program (TAP)

A Proposed Teacher Assistant Program (TAP) for Lee County Public Schools
June 2024 by William Bronson MA, MTS, DMin
Executive Summary

Due to staffing challenges in the public schools, there is a need for an innovative approach to meeting these challenges.

The Teacher Assistant Program (TAP) that follows is based on a small and brief pilot project partially implemented at The Success Academy in Fort Myers last year (2022 – 2023) by Enlighten Education Co-op, a 501c3. Participants included Oswaldo Russian, Chris Ruhnke, Margaret Morris and others. The program was intended to be provided free to the District but for various reasons had to be discontinued due to a shortfall in funding.

The vision was to access a rich pool of educational talent consisting of retired teachers and veterans in our area. It was determined that this talent pool could be activated by offering part time employment at $20- $25 per hour to retirees who would bring their experience and assistance to the aid of full-time teachers who requested such assistance.

In fact, current teachers would be encouraged to assist in the recruitment of their assistants by reaching out to their senior friends, neighbors, and relatives who would be interested in participating.

Currently the District has a volunteer program that could be expanded to include this new category of modestly paid staff of part time seniors who would fit in the space between the current paraprofessionals and regular teachers. They would be designated as TAs (teacher assistants senior) whose credentials would justify a $25/hr compensation. Another category would be TAj (teacher assistant junior) who might be younger persons who are contemplating or studying for a career in education. Finally, TAv would be drawn from retired or disabled veterans. Their targeted compensation would be about $20/hr. All TA would not receive the normal employment benefits considering that seniors may already have pensions and Medicare, etc.

This program would be a WIN, WIN, WIN. The students would receive more individual care. The teachers would receive much needed support. And the seniors would have a place to use their hard earned skills without the stress of full time employment.

For more information contact William Bronson at 239 940 6080 or willbronson7@gmail.com

Or visit our website at www.EnlightenEducationCo-op.org