By Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice
OKLAHOMA CITY — Attorney General Gentner Drummond again took a state board to court over its vote on a religious charter school.
The Statewide Charter School Board on Monday rejected an application to open Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School because its curriculum would include religious teaching. Drummond alleged the vote was deliberately rigged to benefit the school’s chances in court.
He said there were multiple reasons to deny the application, but the board engineered its vote to focus solely on the religious aspect. He asked an Oklahoma County district judge on Wednesday to order the board to issue a new and complete rejection letter that includes all valid grounds for denying the school.
Once the school’s founders file an expected federal lawsuit, that legal challenge would be easier for the school to win because the board “manipulated the record” and left other deficiencies out, the attorney general contended.
“A state agency that deliberately hobbles its own legal position is not doing its job — it is betraying Oklahoma taxpayers,” Drummond said in a statement. “I will not allow that.”
A spokesperson for the board didn’t immediately return a request for comment Thursday.
Drummond opposed the board’s previous attempt to open a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Supreme Court agreed with Drummond and struck down the Catholic school. A deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state ruling.
His objections to the Jewish charter school vote have “nothing to do with the religious character of this school,” he said, because that legal issue has been settled.
Statewide Charter School Board members said they had no choice but to comply with the state Supreme Court ruling and vote against the application for Ben Gamla, which would have been the nation’s first religious charter school, if permitted to open.
Chairperson Brian Shellem, though, said the board is preparing to argue in the Jewish school’s favor once the matter lands in federal court. The board chose the First Liberty Institute, a conservative Christian organization, to serve as its legal representation in the case.
Chief among the attorney general’s complaints was a “material deficiency” with Ben Gamla’s projected enrollment.
The board also flagged the issue when it rejected the school’s application last month, but it excluded the enrollment matter from its second vote to deny, despite the school’s founders failing to address it, the attorney general contended.
The school’s leading founder, Florida charter school leader Peter Deutsch, initially estimated Ben Gamla would serve 40 high school students through an online curriculum.
But once he submitted a formal application to open the online school, Ben Gamla’s goal enrollment jumped tenfold to 400 students K-12.
The board’s attorney, Thomas Schneider, of the Attorney General’s Office, again called into question whether the school could enroll that many students, given the public oppositionBen Gamla has faced within Oklahoma’s Jewish community. Deutsch told the board in January he spoke with about 20 Oklahomans total before applying for the school.
The enrollment discrepancy could be included in the grounds to deny the application, Schneider said during Monday’s board meeting.
Shellem, though, said the enrollment issue wasn’t material enough for a rejection, not when the religious element, which he called the “heart of their application,” was a clearer reason for denial.
The makeup of Ben Gamla’s founding board also is deficient, Drummond contended.
State law requires a charter school board to include a school parent or grandparent. Ben Gamla lists Brett Farley, who leads the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, as its parent representative.
That “raises unresolved questions,” the attorney general’s court filing states.
Farley said he has an 11-year-old daughter who already participates in some online education, and Ben Gamla would “present a unique opportunity to get some rigorous education and a moral foundation.”
“We would definitely, definitely put that on the deck for something she would want to participate in,” he told Oklahoma Voice after Monday’s board meeting.
