Nation’s First Religious Charter School could come to Oklahoma

An Oklahoma State Board of Education is considering approving the nation’s first religious charter school this spring, potentially sparking a high-profile constitutional battle over whether taxpayers’ money can be used to directly fund religious schools.

A small number of charter schools may be affiliated with religious organizations, but the proposed school, to be run by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, would be the first to operate as an explicitly religious school, with religious instruction. Charter schools are a kind of public school, paid for with tax dollars, but independently run and managed.

A decision to approve the charter, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, would almost certainly involve a legal battle, something the school’s organizers expect and welcome.

With conservative justices dominating the Supreme Court, St. Isidore organizers hope their project will help propel a broader national movement to lower barriers between church and state and direct public money toward religious schools.

“We’re trying to motivate the courts to take up this question and give us a definitive answer,” said Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, which represents the Catholic Church on policy issues and supports the proposal.

Members of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, a five-member voting panel appointed by the Republican governor and leaders of the Republican-controlled state legislature, wrestled extensively over whether to approve the school’s application at a meeting Tuesday.

From the start, board members noted the legal weight of the decision and discussed their options if they were sued. Two conflicting legal opinions — from Oklahoma’s former and current attorney general — left them unsure of how to proceed.

The relatively obscure administration is under enormous political pressure. The St. Isidore filing has the support of Governor Kevin Stitt, who has argued that excluding religious charter schools violates the First Amendment’s ban on religious discrimination.

At the meeting, the elected state superintendent, Ryan Walters, a Republican who is not a voting member of the board of directors, attempted to rally the board to support the application.

Mr. Walters characterized opponents as “radical leftists” with a hatred of the Catholic Church and urged board members to make Oklahoma a leader in religious freedom and expanded opportunities for schoolchildren. He added: “I will stand by you, any form of harassment that comes your way.”

The board chairman, Robert Franklin, countered that description from detractors, including local religious leaders and a founder of a coalition for rural schools during a public commentary portion of the meeting.

“No respect for you, but I have not heard a radical position,” he said.

In the end, the board voted 5 to 0 to seek more information from the organizers of St. Isidore, including their analysis of why a religious charter would be constitutional. The council is expected to vote on the issue again later this spring.

“I don’t think it will be us who will end up landing this plane,” said Mr. Franklin. “It will go to the courts to ultimately decide where that ends up.”

In a series of recent rulings, the Supreme Court, which now has a Conservative majority of 6 to 3, has expressed support for sending taxpayers’ money to religious schools amid a wider embrace of religion’s role in public life.

In key cases in 2020 and 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that Montana and Maine could not exclude religious schools from state programs that allowed parents to use publicly funded scholarships or education programs to send their children to private schools. In both cases, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote. that the rulings do not require states to support religious education, but that if a state chooses to subsidize private schools, it must not discriminate against religious schools.

Some legal experts see charter schools as the next frontier, shifting the question from whether parents can use state money to pay for private religious schools of their choosing, to whether the government can fund religious schools directly.

Charter schools represent a hybrid – and growing – educational model. Like regular public schools, they are funded with taxpayer money and do not charge tuition. But unlike traditional schools, they are not zoned for particular neighborhoods, are independently run, and are often designed for innovation and flexibility. About 7 percent of public school students in the United States attend charter schools.

Lori Allen Walke, the senior pastor of the Mayflower Congregational UCC Church, a Protestant community in Oklahoma City, was among those who spoke against the proposal Tuesday. In an interview, she described the idea of ​​religious charter schools as a violation of religious freedom, which “protects our right to practice the religion of our choice and not to practice a religion of anyone else’s choice.”

Ms. Walke, who works with Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a legal advocacy group, was alarmed by St. Isidore’s application, which describes Catholic schools participating in “the evangelistic mission of the church.”

“They’re very transparent about what they’re trying to do there,” she said.

Organizers for St. Isidore said the school would accept students of all faiths or no faith — just as other Catholic schools in Oklahoma do now. If approved, the school, named after the patron saint of the internet, would accept a first batch of 500 students in kindergarten through 12th grade, starting fall 2024.

“We’re taking what we’ve been doing in Catholic schools in Oklahoma for over a century and putting it online so we can bring this content to rural people,” Mr. Farley, of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, said before Tuesday’s meeting.

He said that while a religious charter school represented an “innovation,” the concept of government money going to a religious institution was “not exceptional at all.”

“We’re doing this in many walks of life,” he said. “We have Medicaid that goes to Catholic hospitals. We have FEMA relief funds that go to Catholic charities.

But the prospect of a religious school fully funded by the taxpayer raises additional questions.

When asked about admitting LGBTQ staff and students, for example, Mr. Farley that he could not comment on hypothetical hypotheses. He said the school intended to abide by state regulations while also upholding the right to operate according to its religious beliefs.

Wider approval of religious charter schools would apply to all types of religions – Jewish and Muslim charter schools, for example. But Rachel Laser, president and chief executive of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said she was concerned the Oklahoma case “clears a path for the government to favor majority religion.”

Nicole Stelle Garnett, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who has advocated for religious charter schools and advised St. Isidore organizers, said the “underlying question was not about religion, but whether charter schools” state actors”. or “private actors”, despite being funded by the government.

“Are they really government agents, or are they more like a government contractor?” she asked, following the example of Lockheed Martin, a private company that contracts for the US military.

If they’re private actors, there’s room for them to be expressly religious, Ms Garnett said.

But the charter school movement sees itself squarely on public education, said Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

She noted that charter schools must meet the same requirements as regular public schools, such as hiring staff and accepting students regardless of religious background or sexual identity — protections she fears will disappear under religious charters.

The legal question — whether charter schools are “state actors” or “private actors” — is central to another case, from North Carolina, which the Supreme Court will consider whether it should be dealt with.

Should the issue make its way to the Supreme Court, Preston Green, a University of Connecticut professor who studies education law, believes the court’s conservative majority will likely embrace charter schools as “private actors,” opening the door to religious charters. .

“I just don’t see them saying ‘no’ to this, given the chance,” he said.

Charlie Savage reporting contributed