CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2024 / 17:15 pm
The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against the establishment of a virtual Catholic charter school, which would have been the first of its kind in the nation.
In the U.S., charter schools are free, publicly funded schools that have greater flexibility in their operations and management than traditional public schools. Buoyed by favorable U.S. Supreme Court rulings in recent years and relatively friendly regulations toward charter schools in Oklahoma, the push to approve the nation’s first religious charter school has been closely watched as a test case that could open up a new form of school choice for Catholic parents.
The state of Oklahoma, under Attorney General Gentner Drummond, had in October 2023 asked the court to declare the contract with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School unconstitutional. In the ruling — from which two justices dissented all or in part — the court agreed, directing the state to rescind its contract with the virtual Catholic charter school.
Oklahoma’s current law governing charter schools states that they must be “nonsectarian” in their “programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations.” In addition, the Oklahoma Constitution, echoing the U.S. Constitution, forbids government funding of religion.