Oklahoma rejects proposed religious charter school. Supporters already plan to sue.
The Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School is the second attempt in the state to use taxpayer dollars for religious indoctrination
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In a welcome move, Oklahoma officials have rebuffed an attempt from Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School to become the nation’s first taxpayer-funded religious charter school. If that story sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because the state was the site of another, similar effort that ultimately failed at the Supreme Court.
To understand the significance of what just happened, it helps to know how we got here.
Years ago, the Republicans on the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board gave a stamp of approval to the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. Unlike public schools, St. Isidore of Seville would not have required teachers to be certified, would not have to accept openly LGBTQ teachers, and would explicitly promote Catholic doctrine during school hours. There was also the possibility that students who became pregnant could get expelled—along with trans students just for existing—and that sex education would be omitted from the curriculum. In addition, this kind of school wouldn’t have the resources to take on special needs students.
This wasn’t a charter school that happened to be Catholic. This was a Catholic school that wanted public funding, so they called themselves a charter school.
It was given a green light to open… until the state’s highest court stopped them. That 7-1 decision was a clear defense of church/state separation, with the justices saying that funding the religious school violated both the state and federal constitutions.
An appeal went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, her colleagues were deadlocked 4-4, which left the earlier ruling in place, ending the threat.
That’s why another religious group tried to finish what the Catholics started.
In November, members of the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board learned that a “virtual religious charter high school” was eager to get their approval. That was the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School. As the Oklahoma Voice explained:
Leading the latest effort is the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, whose representative, Peter Deutsch, founded six non-religious Hebrew-English charter schools in Florida known as the Ben Gamla charter schools.
Deutsch, a former Democratic U.S. representative, submitted a letter of intent on Nov. 3 to apply for charter authorization with the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board. A formal application has not yet been submitted for the school, and the board cannot take a vote until that happens.
“Ben Gamla envisions Oklahoma students gaining a rigorous, values-based education that integrates general academic excellence with Jewish religious learning and ethical development,” Deutsch wrote.
Deutsch said the foundation that would submit the Oklahoma application is completely separate from an organization of a similar name that governs the Florida schools.
Deutsch added that the potential school would deliver “Oklahoma’s state-approved academic standards alongside Jewish religious studies, enabling students to achieve college readiness while developing deep Jewish knowledge, faith, and values within a supportive learning community.”
Deutsch has already launched a handful of secular charter schools in Florida, with a focus on Hebrew language and culture, but this one in Oklahoma would be explicitly religious in nature.
In fact, before the Supreme Court weighed in on St. Isidore, Deutsch made clear he looked to that school as a model:
When Oklahoma approved St. Isidore, Deutsch traveled there, hoping to fulfill his original vision of a publicly funded Jewish school. However, after speaking with rabbis and Jewish parents, he concluded that the state’s small Jewish population made the idea impractical.
So he wasn’t bothered by the church/state implications of it all. He was only concerned there wouldn’t be enough students enrolled. On paper, these are the same kinds of schools. The only difference is that if this inevitable lawsuit reached the Supreme Court, Barrett wouldn’t have to recuse herself and the conservatives might finally rule in their favor.
[Deutsch] also noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s tie vote in the St. Isidore case, from which Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, calling the debate over religious charter schools an “unanswered question.”
“I work under the assumption today that religious charter schools are legal and eventually we’ll have a decision to validate the law as I see it today,” Deutsch said.
And wouldn’t you know it, the Oklahoma Voice noted that one of the three founders for this Jewish school, Brett Farley, was also a board member for St. Isidore. (Either Farley has no religious allegiance whatsoever or he’s committed to the conservative idea that taxpayers should fund religious indoctrination and he’ll use any religion he can to pry open that door.)
The plan for the new school was to open in the fall of 2026 if approved.
Not long after the announcement was made, the state’s attorney general (who’s now running for governor) vowed to fight this project just as he did the last one:
“This matter has already been resolved after the state Supreme Court’s ruling to prevent taxpayer funded religious charter schools was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year,” Leslie Berger, a spokesperson for [Attorney General Gentner Drummond], said Monday. “Our office will oppose any attempts to undermine the rule of law.”
Incidentally, Deutsch was a Democratic congressman from Florida from 1993-2005. But in 2024, he endorsed Donald Trump because of Trump’s supposed commitment to immigration policy, school choice, and—I kid you not—”world peace.” All of which is to say this is not a guy with a reputation for clear thinking.
This plan needed to be stopped in its tracks.
And now it has.
On Monday, the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board voted to reject the school’s application. It was a unanimous vote, with members saying their hands were tied because of the legal precedent.
The board and the Jewish charter school’s founders are now preparing for another protracted legal battle. After unanimously rejecting the school, the board voted to seek out private attorneys to handle expected litigation.
“I would be shocked if there’s not a lawsuit filed by Friday,” board Chairperson Brian Shellem said.
…
[Brett] Farley said the board’s decision Monday was no surprise.
“The law is what it is,” he told reporters after the vote. “We made our best application, and now we’re off to the courts.”
The school’s founders plan to file a legal challenge in federal court, according to a written statement Farley handed to news media. The prepared remarks reiterate arguments Catholic officials made before the state and U.S. supreme courts — that religious entities cannot be excluded from a neutral public benefit solely because of their faith-based character.
Their decision was made a week after a coalition of church/state separation groups—including Americans United for Separation of Church and State, FFRF, the ACLU, and others—sent the board a letter urging them to reject Ben Gamla’s application:
… the coalition explained the many ways Ben Gamla’s proposed school would violate state and federal law by indoctrinating students in a specific religion and discriminating against students, staff and, potentially, parents. The groups also pointed to substantial deficiencies in required elements throughout the application, as well as passages that appear to have been copied from other schools’ applications and are plainly inapplicable to Ben Gamla.
That last part may be the most intriguing, especially if the people behind the school plan to sue, because you would think their application would be perfect. Instead, it appears they were just going through the motions because this wasn’t about launching a real school; this was always about using the school to spur a legal battle.
Here’s what the coalition said about those deficiencies:
… the application evinces an overall lack of planning and attention to detail. Several portions appear to be recycled from other charter applications or sources without consideration of their applicability to Ben Gamla. For instance, the application references “our current schools in Oklahoma City,” but Ben Gamla has no schools in Oklahoma City (or elsewhere in Oklahoma). The application also references a set of standards and benchmarks—“National Standards and Benchmarks for effective Jewish Elementary and secondary The [sic] Schools”—that do not appear to exist. Rather, this reference seems to have been copied and modified from some other source that references the National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools. Further, the application contains several provisions that make little sense for a virtual school. For example, the application contains a policy detailing when students may “leave school for a field trip”; a discussion pertaining to “lunch or after school detention”; and a policy for transporting service animals “to and from school.” In multiple places, the application refers to the Statewide Charter School Board using its former name. And perhaps most concerningly, Ben Gamla’s five-year budget contains enrollment projections that do not match the enrollment projections provided elsewhere in the application.
Christ.
I can’t believe I reread emails I write multiple times when these morons are filing an application for an entire school—that they hope will be at the center of a future Supreme Court case, no less—and no one even bothers to proofread the damn thing.
Not that any of this matters to the conservatives at the legal firm Becket, which plans to represent the school in court. They immediately claimed this was religious discrimination, never mentioning all the problems with the application itself.
“Attorney General Drummond’s attack on religious schools contradicts the Constitution,” said Eric Baxter, senior counsel at Becket and attorney for Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School. “His actions have hung a no-religious-need-apply sign on the state’s charter school program, ignoring years of Supreme Court precedent and leaving religious families out in the cold. We’ll soon ask a federal court to protect Ben Gamla’s freedom to serve Sooner families, a right that every other qualified charter school enjoys.”
The problem with that analogy is that charter schools are public schools. They’re not private schools with access to taxpayer dollars, which is the basis for so many voucher programs across the country. Because of that, no judge has any reason to pretend religious discrimination was why the application was rejected.
This has always been an obvious attempt to turn public education into a taxpayer-funded battleground for religious indoctrination. It’s all about exploiting a loophole by siphoning public money into sectarian projects that explicitly reject the kinds of obligations public schools have: inclusivity, non-discrimination, professional standards, and a curriculum grounded in fact rather than dogma.
This has never been about school choice. It has always been a deliberate attempt to dismantle the wall between church and state.
They thought they could get away with it in red-state Oklahoma, but with Ryan Walters out of the picture, they don’t even have allies willing to do their dirty work for them. That means they need an activist right-wing judge to help them out.
The scary thing is that that’s a very real possibility. And if one group succeeds, you can bet every religious institution in the country will line up to follow suit, ready to decimate public education in order to boost a patchwork of free religious schools. Once that door is opened, it will be next to impossible to close. The end result wouldn’t be a richer educational landscape. It would be a broken system where public dollars fund private belief.
Oklahoma has already been down this road before, and thanks to the state’s attorney general and Supreme Court, they avoided making a terrible mistake. But the U.S. Supreme Court is a threat that isn’t going away. And Drummond won’t be attorney general for much longer. All the more reason for judges to stop this scheme at every turn, giving the Supreme Court no reason to even take this case up.
(Portions of this article were published earlier)
It is not, and never was, the job of our secular government to backstop anyone’s religion. The first Amendment makes it pretty clear that government cannot endorse one religion over another. If they want a Jewish school, then they can pay for it themselves. It is not the tax payers responsibility. Religious schools should not get one cent of public money for any reason.
"Deutsch was a Democratic congressman from Florida from 1993-2005. But in 2024, he endorsed Donald Trump because of Trump’s supposed commitment to immigration policy, school choice, and—I kid you not—”world peace.”"
Oy vey! That guy's meshuga!