Epic governing board issues apology, payment of Anti-SLAPP judgment to former state senator

In March, the overhauled school board voted to end a 2-year-old legal crusade against Ron Sharp, a former Republican state senator from Shawnee. A judge finalized the judgment in the case Tuesday.

“This school was weaponized back previously with the prior management company and used inappropriately against Mr. Sharp. On behalf of the school, I wanted to apologize to him and for what he went through because it was not easy, I’m sure,” said board Chairman Paul Campbell.

In the summer of 2019, Sharp sponsored an interim study probing how Epic had been reporting some of its student enrollment and attendance figures to the Oklahoma State Department of Education, which uses such data to calculate state aid for all public schools.

In December 2019, Epic sued Sharp for libel and slander, seeking at least $75,000, but the school lost big in August 2020.

An Oklahoma County district judge not only slapped Epic with a bill for $36,000 for Sharp’s legal fees in defending himself against the lawsuit but also ordered the school to pay the senator $500,000 in sanctions under a state law intended to prevent the use of lawsuits or threats of lawsuits to intimidate or silence critics exercising their First Amendment rights.

Oklahoma’s anti-SLAPP, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, law is called the Oklahoma Citizens Participation Act. Epic had appealed the ruling all the way to the Oklahoma Supreme Court before the board recently halted that appeal.

Epic’s newly approved payout will also include up to $65,000 total in interest to be paid to Sharp and his attorney.

Sharp, a retired Shawnee High School teacher and tennis coach who was first elected to the Oklahoma Senate in 2012, told the Tulsa World Wednesday that the awarding of court sanctions back in 2020 came as a complete shock to him.

Now, he said, he mostly feels vindicated by the law enforcement findings described in public court records in a criminal case recently filed against Epic co-founders David Chaney and Ben Harris and their former chief finance officer, Josh Brock.

“As a state senator, it was my duty to provide oversight of state funds allocated to Epic Charter Schools. Epic used public funds to intimidate me with this lawsuit just because I questioned Epic’s obvious illegal activities,” Sharp said.

After a years-long probe by the state, Chaney, Harris and Brock were arrested and charged in June in Oklahoma County District Court in a felony racketeering case.

A court affidavit filed alongside the criminal charges revealed that investigators have records that school funds were used to cover the costs of extensive political contributions made with private credit cards, including an attack advertising campaign with false claims about Sharp’s legislative voting record to unseat him during his 2020 reelection bid.

Law enforcement also alleges that Chaney and Harris’ scheme involved boosting Epic’s enrollment — and therefore their profits — by signing up home-schooled children and private schoolers who were not actually engaged as full-time public school students.

“Private school students from St. John’s Christian Heritage Academy, St. Peter and Paul Catholic School, Bridge of Hope and Rising High Christian Academy were dual enrolled with Epic,” the affidavit states.

Some parents reportedly had no idea that their children in those schools were also “fraudulently enrolled in Epic,” and a private school administrator told authorities she had an “arrangement” with Epic to provide her school with supplies and services in exchange for enrolling students in Epic.

A one-time Epic teacher interviewed by authorities reported being instructed by her superiors, including Harris, to conceal the fact that home-schooled students were not participating in Epic and to give them credit for “doing yard work, participating in extracurricular activities, or just talking with them (the teacher) on the phone.”