Andrea Eger
Tulsa World Staff Writer
The Office of the Oklahoma Attorney General offered new details this week of its legal bid to halt the nation’s would-be first religious charter school in its tracks.
On Oct. 9, a divided Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved a contract with Catholic leaders in Oklahoma to create St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which if opened, would be a taxpayer-funded charter school intended to provide greater access to Catholic school education across the state.
In his lawsuit filed Oct. 20, Attorney General Gentner Drummond asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court to enforce existing state law that defines charter schools as public schools and specifically prohibits them from affiliation with a nonpublic sectarian school or religious institution.
The AG’s office filed its formal response this week to the legal arguments of the defendant, the virtual charter school board and its five members in their official capacity, as well as St. Isidore, which is an intervenor in the case.
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“For the foregoing reasons, this Court should grant Petitioner’s requested relief to correct the board’s unlawful action to prevent a religious institution from becoming an organ of the State,” stated the attorney general’s filing.
Drummond has requested that the state’s highest court assume original jurisdiction and issue a writ of mandamus and a declaratory judgment “regarding the Board’s unlawful action” in approving the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School proposal.
The attorney general’s office noted that both the virtual charter school board and St. Isidore agree with the AG that the Supreme Court should take up the case.
The rest of the AG’s latest court filing makes clear that’s about the only point of agreement on this matter.
For starters, the attorney general insists that state law clearly defines charter schools as public schools, but claims SVCSB and St. Isidore “try to hide the ball by repeatedly characterizing St. Isidore and its board as private entities.”
“It is absurd for the SVCSB and St. Isidore to claim that St. Isidore is not a state actor when St. Isidore’s decisions and operations can be overruled and taken over by State, and St. Isidore is subject to, among other things, the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act, the Oklahoma Open Records Act, and the same academic standards and expectations as existing public schools,” reads the AG’s argument.
Next, arguments that the state should be allowed to disburse funds to a religious entity that provides substantial service in return do not apply, the AG’s office says, because under state law St. Isidore would be a public charter school not a religious entity.
Lastly, the state’s top legal officer says claims that denying St. Isidore state sanctioning and taxpayer funding would violate religious freedom law in Oklahoma and that such law overrules the prohibition on sectarian schools “are easily refuted.”
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