EDUCATION LAW CENTER APPLAUDS OKLAHOMA BOARD’S DECISION NOT TO APPROVE RELIGIOUS CHARTER SCHOOL

Today, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board (SVCSB) denied an application to establish a charter school that is based on religious curriculum, programs, and policies. But the decision gives the school 30 days to fix defects in its application before the SVCSB votes again. Education Law Center urges the SVCSB to maintain its disapproval of the application.

“Allowing a religious charter school upends the very notion of public education,” said Robert Kim, Executive Director of Education Law Center, a nonprofit legal and advocacy organization. “Charter school laws were passed based on assurances that they are public schools. It is absolutely critical that the SVCSB refuse to endorse a school that signaled it does not consider itself fully bound by key state or federal laws, including non-discrimination requirements, that are essential to a public education system.”

Charter schools are created by state laws and governed by those laws as well as the charter authorizers the state has identified. They engage in the core governmental function of providing public education to thousands of students. They are not exempt from state and federal laws that protect students from discrimination.

It is true that several states have failed to adequately monitor and correct charter school noncompliance with these laws or curb abuses that have arisen in the sector. However, this is markedly different from state officials declaring that a public charter school can choose not to comply with crucial anti-discrimination protections.

The Education Clause of the Oklahoma Constitution requires the state’s system of public schools to be “free from sectarian control” and clearly mandates that the public schools “shall be open to all the children of the state.” Moreover, Oklahoma’s state charter school law both prohibits religious charter schools and requires charter schools to be non-discriminatory. The application from St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School indicated the school would not commit to serving all students as required by law – including those with disabilities or a religion or sexual orientation that conflicted with its tenets.

Proponents of public funding of religious charter schools liken such an arrangement to private school vouchers and seek to apply recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions about public funding of religious private schools to the charter sector. But charter schools, including Oklahoma’s, are not funded by families receiving an individual subsidy they spend at a private school. Instead, charter schools are directly funded by the states as public schools. Charter schools are also expressly subject to state statutes and administrative rules that shape how they are authorized, monitored, and regulated.

Public education supporters may breathe a sigh of relief today, but the SVCSB’s final decision on the St. Isidore application is yet to come. Efforts by ELC and others to protect public school students under the law will continue unabated.

Press Contact:

Sharon Krengel
Director of Policy, Strategic Partnerships and Communications
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 240

Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Director of Policy, Strategic Partnerships and Communications
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x240