Opponents of religious charter school: St. Isidore poses threat to all public charters
Andrea Eger
Tulsa World
Updated
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Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley reenters the room after an executive session at the meeting of the governing board of St. Isidore Catholic Virtual Charter School in June 2024.
Tulsa World Archive
“Over 30 years ago, I authored into law, with a strong bipartisan coalition, the first charter school law in the country, allowing publicly funded open-enrollment schools to operate within a state’s system of public education,” former Minnesota state Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court. “Since then, the law has been enacted in 45 states (now 46 states), in each case reinforcing that charter schools were always public schools.”
Advocacy groups that helped establish and expand public school choice for parents over the past three decades say the authorization of a religious charter school in Oklahoma, if successful, would spark years of litigation across the nation and could spell the end of the only means of school choice altogether in some states.
Members of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board discuss the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School on June 19, 2023. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has assailed the state sponsorship of the private school as “clearly unconstitutional” and against his office’s repeated legal warnings.
“The implications beyond the separation of church and state are not well understood. This is a huge, huge issue,” said Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond explains how he wins the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School before the Supreme Court: Drummond explains the case and how he plans to prevail during a Tulsa Press Club Town Hall in February.
Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley reenters the room after an executive session at the meeting of the governing board of St. Isidore Catholic Virtual Charter School in June 2024.
“Over 30 years ago, I authored into law, with a strong bipartisan coalition, the first charter school law in the country, allowing publicly funded open-enrollment schools to operate within a state’s system of public education,” former Minnesota state Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge wrote in a brief to the Supreme Court. “Since then, the law has been enacted in 45 states (now 46 states), in each case reinforcing that charter schools were always public schools.”
Members of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board discuss the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School on June 19, 2023. Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has assailed the state sponsorship of the private school as “clearly unconstitutional” and against his office’s repeated legal warnings.
“The implications beyond the separation of church and state are not well understood. This is a huge, huge issue,” said Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
