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For the 2025-2026 school year:

For Monument Academy Elementary students, we offer Released Time classes once a week during Specials time to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders.

For Monument Academy Middle School students, we offer Released Time classes to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders during their 7th period.

For Lewis-Palmer Middle School students, we offer Released Time classes to 7th and 8th graders during their 7th period.

For Lewis-Palmer, Monument Academy, and Palmer Ridge High School students, we offer three courses: Foundations (covers the foundational beliefs of Christianity, metanarrative of the Bible, and the core tenets of Christian living), Apologetics (guidance for defending and commending the Christian faith to others), and Worldview (explores how Christian worldview compares to 5 other worldviews and how they each answer life’s biggest questions in ethics, history, philosophy, politics, biology, and more). The Culture course will be offered beginning in Fall 2027, and it will help students learn to engage as effective witnesses for Christ with very challenging issues in the world.

Lewis-Palmer and Palmer Ridge students combine for their class during one school period according to a block schedule, and Monument Academy High School students attend RTBE class one period every day.

Email us at trilakesschoolministries@gmail.com with your child’s name, grade, school, and how we can best reach you. We will send you the registration form for the Released Time class.

If your child is in high school, please also email your child’s guidance counselor and/or registrar, letting him/her know that your child is enrolled in Tri-Lakes School Ministries’ Released Time Bible Education (RTBE) class. His/her elective credit for the class will be transferred from Colorado Springs Christian Schools, and we will send you more information on that when you have registered your child with us. You will also need to submit an Attendance Waiver form to your child’s guidance counselor and/or registrar, giving permission for your child to attend the class off campus. We can provide that form to you, or your school may also send it to you.

One lead teacher and at least one volunteer is with each class in our program. Substitute teachers will assist when needed. Two adults will be in the classroom at all times.

Absolutely. Every one of our staff and volunteers are background checked and required to participate in child safety training through Protect My Ministry in order to safeguard your children and our ministry. We also run a Motor Vehicle Records check on any staff member or volunteer who drives students.

YES! High school students can receive high school AND college elective credit for our Released Time classes! 

Colorado Springs Christian Schools has very generously offered to be our school of accreditation. Elective credit for our RTBE classes is transferred from CSCS to your child’s school of record. Email us for more details on how that works.

3 college elective hours credit is awarded through Bryan College to 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students who complete a full year course of Summit Ministries: Foundations, Apologetics, or Worldviews. Students must complete the full 36-week syllabus with a grade of C (70) or above and pass the final exam to earn the credit. These credit hours transfer to 90% of U.S. colleges and universities! To be sure, call the registrar’s office of your prospective school to confirm.

Students are all on different paths to graduate, and depending on a variety of factors, have different course requirements necessary for graduation. However, high schools allow space in a four-year, 8 classes-a-semester schedule, and many students can achieve what’s needed for graduation long before attending all four years of high school. Most students should easily be able to attend at least one year of RTBE class, if not more.

For 2025-26 for MA Elementary, students may enroll for one semester. If there are extra seats in the spring, we will open enrollment to students who attended in the fall and would like to continue in the spring.

For 2025-26 MA Middle School and LP Middle School students, students may enroll for one semester or an entire year. 

High School Foundations, Apologetics, and Worldview are each a one year course, intended to be taught in 2-semester parts, and we will add Summit’s final high school one-year course, Culture, in the fall of 2027.

Students may attend the high school courses for one semester, but they will then only be able to earn high school credit for that one semester.

Students may only earn college credit if they attend a class the full year through. 

More is explained about upcoming classes in the curriculum series here.

Click (here) for more information on the legality of Released Time Bible Education

Elementary and middle school students do not receive homework. We do send out “Home Connection” activities to families of elementary students for further discussion and application of our lessons at home.

High school students have required reading, answering of discussion questions, and studying for tests. Group projects will be done in class. When students come prepared to discuss a topic because they have read and answered questions ahead of time, it makes discussion much more fruitful and fun for all. The structure of this class is not lecture-style. While teachers will certainly explain unfamiliar and/or new topics, they will serve more as facilitators of a Socratic method- style classroom, encouraging dialogue, questioning, role-play, and debate among and with the students.

Quizzes and tests are not given to elementary or middle school students.

High school teachers will periodically assess students for understanding. Tests are listed in the syllabus given at the beginning of each semester.

No. All students are welcome, without any expectations except that the students respect their peers and instructors and come to class prepared to actively participate and learn. No student is pressured to hold a certain belief.

TLSM staff and volunteers are required to agree to our Statement of Faith found here (scroll to bottom of linked page). As Christians ourselves, we take seriously our integrity in how we represent Jesus Christ and Christianity to our students. As followers of Christ, we recognize that we may not all agree on every issue, but there are certain foundational beliefs made clear in scripture and in God’s commands that we believe cannot be compromised.

Our elementary students learn about what truth is, how the biblical worldview answers major life questions and how it differs from other worldviews, the overarching story of the Bible (biblical metanarrative), and what it means to become a Christian and follow Jesus.

Our middle school students dig deeper into the metanarrative of the Bible and the foundational beliefs of Christianity. They learn about truth and why we can trust the Bible. Students also compare the biblical worldview with other worldviews, and they explore Jesus’s life and ministry.

Our classes are intended for those genuinely seeking truth and desiring to understand the biblical worldview. Many youth are trying to make sense out of conflicting messages in our culture about identity, purpose, values, social justice, whether God is real and good, and whether truth is relative. Students are safe in our classrooms to discuss candid questions and arguments, and we will address them from a biblical perspective, encouraging students to compare and analyze the biblical worldview with other worldviews.

We’re here to help students discover for themselves whether truth can be found- and how to defend it. We believe that there is verifiable evidence to show that Christianity is a “reasonable” worldview. The biblical worldview strongly aligns with reality regarding how the world works and presents compelling evidence that a supernatural, personal, uncreated creator designed our world and the abundant variety of life within it. Scripture, the claims of Jesus, and His Resurrection can be tested for historical reliability as well.

(sWe are an individual 501c3 nonprofit Christian ministry, not directly connected with a specific denomination or church. We are a member of School Ministries (schoolministries.org) national organization, and we are a part of the Body of Christ as described in the Bible. As followers of Christ, we adhere to our Statement of Faith found here (scroll to bottom of linked page). Our staff and volunteers attend different local Christian churches, and many local Christian churches support Tri-Lakes School Ministries.

As we continue to grow and face various costs, we are asking but not requiring each family to donate $100 per student per year to help cover curriculum costs, enrollment fees with CSCS (high school only), and classroom materials costs. With donor support increasing, we hope to very soon offer the class at no cost to families.

Email us at [email protected] to let us know if your child will be missing class. Please inform your child’s school according to their protocol.

Regarding snow days, holidays, and any other school day that does not follow the regular block schedule, we will follow D38’s protocol. If D38 cancels school, we will not have class. If there’s a delay, we will follow the high school delay schedules. We will send email notification to families as soon as we are aware of any changes in schedule, including if anything differs between Lewis Palmer/Palmer Ridge/LPMS and Monument Academy.

This will be up to each teacher’s discretion, depending on food allergies in each class. But in general, yes, students may bring snacks. And sometimes teachers will provide snacks or parents/volunteers can send in snacks for the whole class. We just ask that food not become a distraction to learning and that students clean up after themselves, leaving the classroom each day better than it was when we arrived. 

Two adults will be present at all times with the students. Doors will be monitored by an adult volunteer as students arrive, and doors will be locked 5 minutes after class starts. If a student arrives late, he/she can call the teacher to let him/her in the building.

Every staff and volunteer is background checked through Protect My Ministry and is also required to participate in child safety training.

Tri-Lakes School Ministries provides accident insurance for each student which kicks in after a student’s family/personal insurance.

Monument Academy Elementary students have about 45 minutes of Released Time one day a week.

MA Middle School students have about 45 minutes of Released Time every day.

Lewis-Palmer Middle School students have about 40 minutes of Released Time every day.

MA High School students attend Released Time class one period (approximately 45 minutes) every day.

Lewis-Palmer/Palmer Ridge High School students attend class one period (approximately 1 hr 10 min) during a block schedule, so they attend RTBE class every other school day.

Volunteers walk or drive the elementary and middle school students between Released Time class and school. In some scenarios when Released Time is at the end of the day, parents pick up their children from RT class.

High school students/families are responsible for the students’ own transportation to class if their RTBE class is their first class of the day. For returning to school and any other class periods, students with licenses may drive themselves, parents can drive, and/or we have volunteer adult drivers to help transport students. Parents/guardians must give permission for their child to ride with anyone else, for their child to drive another student, or they must indicate that they will be driving their child themselves.

Teachers will not be paid this year, but we hope to grow our donations in order to provide a modest salary to teachers as soon as possible.