OKLAHOMA CITY — Legal efforts to found the nation’s first religious charter school in Oklahoma have reignited, with a and a former U.S. congressman filing a lawsuit against the state Tuesday.

The founding group of Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School and former Florida U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch, who applied to open the school, sued the state’s attorney general and the Statewide Charter School Board in Oklahoma City federal court.

The statewide board, which governs charter schools, voted earlier this month to deny the school’s application to open. The Oklahoma Supreme Court forbade the board from permitting state-funded religious schools in .

Deutsch and Ben Gamla’s founders allege religious groups are wrongfully excluded from opening charter schools with faith-based instruction — a similar argument Oklahoma Catholic leaders made when trying to establish St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. 

They contend the Jewish school’s rejection amounts to religious discrimination, violating the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. They asked a federal judge to block the state from enforcing Oklahoma laws that require charter schools to be non-sectarian.

“We’re asking the court to end that blatant religious targeting and allow families to choose schools that are best for them,” Deutsch said in a statement Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, Shauna Peters, said it is reviewing the lawsuit and will respond in due time.

A law firm representing the Statewide Charter School Board didn’t immediately return a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.

Attorney General Genter Drummond led the legal fight against the Catholic school, contending the concept of a publicly funded religious school would violate church-state separation enshrined in both the U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions. The state Supreme Court sided with him.

Members of the Statewide Charter School Board said they rejected Ben Gamla’s application solely to comply with the Supreme Court ruling and . They hired a conservative Christian legal group, the First Liberty Institute, to represent them.

After the Catholic school was rejected at the state level, the in April of last year. The nation’s highest Court , with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused. That allowed the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling to stand.

One of the Catholic school’s founding board members, Brett Farley, now holds a similar board position with the Jewish school as a representative of prospective parents.

All charter school boards in the state must have a parent member. Drummond called into question whether Farley, who is Catholic, would genuinely enroll a child in the school. Farley told Oklahoma Voice he “would definitely” consider the school for his daughter, if it opens.

For this reason and others, Drummond contended Ben Gamla’s board and application had multiple deficiencies beyond the religious component that should have contributed to its rejection. He against the statewide board, alleging it deliberately weakened its own legal position to benefit the school’s federal case.

Drummond asked that an Oklahoma County district judge order the board to issue a new and complete rejection letter to the school.

Meanwhile, multiple Oklahoma synagogues and Jewish organizations . In a January joint statement, they said Ben Gamla’s founding group failed to meaningfully consult the local Jewish community.

Deutsch told the statewide board he spoke with about 10 Jewish parents and 20 people total in Oklahoma before applying to open Ben Gamla. He founded six secular charter schools in Florida that have a similar name.

The Oklahoma school would offer an online-based education to students K-12 that is “intellectually rigorous and deeply rooted in Jewish knowledge, values and lived tradition,” according to its application.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Pensions are sort of like New Year’s resolutions. Policymakers always promise, to themselves and to their constituents, that this will be the year they’ll finally get their financial house in order and bolster their pensions. But inevitably, something shiny comes along and distracts them.  

Oklahoma is grappling with this dilemma right now. After years of dutifully funneling millions of extra dollars into its beleaguered teacher pension plan, state policymakers are now considering scaling back. Instead, they would like to use that money to fund : pay raises for active teachers, more money for its school choice tax credit program, plus new investments in reading and math.

It’s likely to be a popular list. But it threatens to derail the state’s progress on pension funding. 

Oklahoma has actually done better on the pension front than most other states. Thanks to a combination of benefit cuts, plus a surge of new contributions, it has dramatically improved the health of its teacher pension plan. 

For example, the system’s unfunded liability, essentially the difference between how much it had promised and how much it had saved toward those promises, from $10.4 billion in 2010 down to $6.1 billion last year. Its funded ratio — a comparison between its assets and its liabilities — has improved from in 2010 all the way 80% as of last June. 

Oklahoma’s teacher plan is still not quite as well-funded as the median state and local plan — which was funded last year — but the state’s policymakers deserve kudos for making progress. Current and retired Oklahoma teachers should be thankful that their retirement plan is in much better shape than it was 16 years ago.

So how did they do it? First, legislators raised the retirement age from 62 to 65 and extended the amount of time that a teacher would need to work to qualify for a benefit from five to seven years. (This is called the vesting period, and these tend to be longer for teachers than for workers in the private sector. For example, according to a survey of Vanguard 401(k) plans, of employees are immediately vested in their employer’s retirement contributions.) These policy changes meant that any Oklahoma teacher who started after Oct. 31, 2011, had to wait just a bit longer to qualify for retirement benefits than those who came before them.  

A rising stock market certainly helped the pension plan as well, but the biggest change was on the funding side. From 2001 to 2011, Oklahoma was contributing less each year than what its actuaries said it needed to. Instead of paying off their metaphorical credit card in full, they made only minimum payments, which led to a large financial hole.

But every year since 2012, Oklahoma has put in more than what its actuaries said it needed to. As of , individuals were required to contribute 7% of their salaries. Employers like school districts paid 9.5% of each employee’s salary. And the state contributed a percentage of its revenues from sales taxes, cigarette taxes, corporate income taxes, individual income taxes and lottery proceeds. This extra state contribution came out to $456 million last year, and this is the portion that state legislators now want to cut back.

Oklahoma’s teacher pension plan is in much better shape today than it was. But it’s instructive to compare it with the plan Oklahoma offers to other state employees, which is in even better shape than the teacher plan.

That largely comes down to how far legislators went in designing reforms for each plan. In the case of the teachers, Oklahoma’s legislators were more hands-off. Teachers continue to be placed in the same defined benefit pension plan, for example. On average, their benefits are worth 10.67% of their salary, according to the plan’s latest . But remember that teachers themselves are paying about two-thirds of that cost, which means that most of the contributions made by the state and its school districts are paying for the plan’s unfunded liabilities, not for benefits for today’s workers. Moreover, the benefit structure is so heavily that someone would have to teach in Oklahoma for decades just to earn more than what they personally contributed.

Meanwhile, state employees have been enrolled in a portable defined contribution 401(k)-style plan since 2015. Members are required to contribute 4.5% of their salary, their employer contributes 6% and employees qualify for a growing share of those contributions over five years. A in the state legislature would raise those contribution rates and drop the vesting requirement altogether. Oklahoma’s higher education employees get an deal.

Putting the benefit situation aside, Oklahoma deserves credit for making substantial progress funding its teacher pension plan. According to the latest financial projections, the state’s actuaries expect that the plan could be fully funded by 2034. However, that assumption depends on its investments earning a 7% return every year. They also cautioned that one risk to its projection is that “actual contributions from the state may not be made in accordance with the current arrangement.” 

If Oklahoma legislators go forward with their plans to divert some of the money toward new expenses, they’d be putting all their hard-earned funding progress at risk.  

OKLAHOMA CITY — Everywhere House Speaker Kyle Hilbert goes, the topic of childhood literacy follows.

Hilbert, R-Bristow, said improving Oklahoma’s elementary reading scores is “top of the agenda for me,” and he’s been telling everyone who will listen.

“Every single event that I’m asked to go to or every single question that I’m asked where it’s economic development, tourist-related, you name it, I talk about reading because it applies to everything,” he told news reporters last month.

Early literacy has risen to the top of state lawmakers’ priorities for their 2026 legislative session, generating discussions and disagreement across the state about what policy changes and resources are necessary to improve children’s reading levels.

Only 27% of Oklahoma public school students scored at their grade level or higher on state reading tests last school year. A ranking of drew widespread public attention to Oklahoma’s ongoing struggles.

Legislators have discussed in literacy programs, but the single most dramatic change — and the most concrete reading policy idea that has emerged at the state Capitol — would be retaining struggling readers in third grade.

Republican leaders have pointed to third-grade retention as a clear solution for Oklahoma’s , but educators and parents said they’re less convinced.

Hilbert’s legislation would require students who score below a basic level in reading to repeat third grade. It also would promote earlier interventions, like summer tutoring, small-group lessons and optional retention in younger grades.

“We know if we pass this bill we will have better education outcomes,” Hilbert told a House education subcommittee in February. “That is a fact. It’s backed by science. It’s backed by data. It’s backed by research. It’s backed by evidence of what other states have done. We know what will happen if we pass this. We just have to have courage to do that.”

Research indicates retaining a student in elementary school leads to a , but retained students face a and .

Parents voice concerns over retention policy

Republican lawmakers and have pointed to Mississippi, with its strict retention requirement and improved reading scores, as a success story to emulate.

Mississippi has surpassed the national average in fourth-grade reading proficiency after on literacy initiatives and reading coaches, along with retaining its lowest-performing third-grade readers.

Oklahoma implemented similar third-grade requirements in the 2013-14 school year and by 2015-16 among early elementary grades.

School districts at the time said the retentions were necessary to prepare students for the high-stakes third-grade reading test.

The policy became unpopular among parents and educators, who complained the state placed far too much consequence on the results of one annual reading test. Lawmakers progressively for children to avoid being held back. They altogether in 2024.

Parents don’t want to return to high-stakes testing, said Wendy Hardwick, president of the Oklahoma Parent Teacher Association.

Hardwick’s twin daughters were in third grade when Oklahoma last had strict retention laws. They had already repeated first grade, and two years later, their reading skills were strong, she said. That didn’t stop them from feeling “scared to death” that a poor testing performance would hold them back again in third grade, she said.

Hardwick, who worked in public schools as a long-term substitute and later in special education, recalled the school environment was “stressful and palpable” during state testing time.

“What (students) understand is that they’re going to take this test, and if they don’t pass it, they’re going to have to take third grade again,” she said. “It’s hard to see kids of that age being put under that type of pressure.”

Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City, had similar worries for her son, who was in pre-K when the retention law first passed.

Like Hardwick’s children, Kirt’s son repeated first grade. It worked out well, she said, but she feared a poor standardized test result would hold him back a second, more damaging time.

“I was pretty nervous about it, and knowing my educators didn’t have much say in it concerned me,” she said. “Our classroom educator the year my son was in third grade said, ‘I know he can read. I’ve talked to him about it. I watch him read. He tells me he knows. We have no idea if he will show that on a standardized test.’”

Broken Arrow parent Kristine Chambers said her daughter in second grade already reads above her grade level and tests well. An extra reading curriculum her daughter received in pre-K through Broken Arrow Public Schools set her up for success today, Chambers said.

Boosting early literacy instruction should be lawmakers’ focus, she said, rather than having students repeat a grade.

“I think that instead of focusing so hard on this retention, maybe put that focus into funding for new programs, new ideas for early childhood literacy, so that we have that good base,” Chambers said. “Obviously, there’s going to be students that learn at different speeds, but I think that if we have a really good, strong reading support and intervention early, we can not have the retention possibility at third grade.”

The state’s poor reading scores demonstrate not enough schools are intervening sufficiently when young readers are struggling, Hilbert said.

That’s why his would require schools to offer summer tutoring, small-group instruction and other services. Mandatory retention “forces that accountability” for schools to take action and communicate with parents earlier, he said.

Teaching quality comes to forefront

Public school teachers have voiced disagreements, not with the concept of retention, but with doing so in third grade.

Students learn the foundations of reading in earlier grades, so the sooner a student is retained, the better, if it’s absolutely necessary, said Cari Elledge, the president of the Oklahoma Education Association, the state’s largest teacher union.

“If you wait until third grade, it might be too late,” said Elledge, a former elementary teacher. “That’s really what we’re hearing from our educators across the state, is we do support this, but if there was any way that we could shift it back a little bit to pre-K, kindergarten, first grade, that would be more beneficial.”

Republican legislators and business leaders have framed backing off of tough retention laws as the start of Oklahoma’s downturn in education rankings. But, other key factors have impacted public schools since that time.

Oklahoma experienced some of the and an . Public schools in Oklahoma now employ and over 800 uncertified adjunct instructors, both of which used to be a rarity in the state.

“When we talk about watering down things, we’ve also watered down certification and licensure, and that has been a dramatic change to public education in the state of Oklahoma,” Elledge said.

The state Legislature has steadily increased public school funding since then, though Oklahoma in per-pupil spending.

Sen. Adam Pugh, who leads the Senate Education Committee, said as lawmakers invest more dollars in public schools, they’re aware Oklahoma’s teacher workforce is now younger, less experienced and more reliant on emergency certified educators.

That’s why measures to recruit and retain more teachers, including raising teacher salaries by $2,500, doubling college scholarship funds for aspiring educators, growing a statewide team of reading coaches and adding millions of dollars to support literacy instruction in public schools.

“I also think when it comes down to it, it’s not about the curriculum,” said Pugh, R-Edmond. “It’s about the individual that’s in front of the classroom every day, and so preparing that individual to go teach kids to learn how to read, I think, is really important.”

Oklahoma City schools show improvement in early readers

Test scores were already on the decline when disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic . Scores then from 2022 to 2024.

As districts seek to claw their way back up, Oklahoma City Public Schools has found a reason for optimism this school year. Winter benchmark testing showed nearly a quarter of the district’s first graders had more than a full academic year of growth in a semester of learning.

If more first graders show accelerated growth now, more will be on track to read proficiently by fourth grade, Oklahoma City Superintendent Jamie Polk said.

A major factor in that growth has been the addition of an extra reading curriculum on top of the district’s core literacy instruction, district leaders said in a March school board meeting. The extra curriculum more explicitly covers phonics and phonemic awareness, two concepts that are essential to sounding out words.

Classrooms that showed the most growth had another key element, Polk told Oklahoma Voice. They had teachers who were trained through content-specific professional development.

“What we have found that works more than anything is … teacher clarity — teachers understanding exactly this is what the students need to know and be able to do, but also when our students can articulate what they need to know and be able to do,” Polk said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Despite rejecting a Jewish charter school a second time, an Oklahoma state board is preparing to argue in the school’s favor in court.

The Statewide Charter School Board on Monday voted to deny a resubmitted application to open Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School. Board members said they had no choice but to comply with a that prohibited the concept of taxpayer-funded religious schools.

Chairperson Brian Shellem said most of the board members disagree with the state Supreme Court’s decision, and they plan to fight against it. They unanimously chose a conservative Christian legal group, the First Liberty Institute, to represent them once the Jewish school’s founders file an expected lawsuit.

The board supported a prior attempt to open a Catholic charter school in the state. The Oklahoma Supreme Court rejected the Catholic school, deciding a publicly funded religious school would violate the church-state separation required under the Oklahoma Constitution. A upheld the state-level ruling.

Shellem said the board’s position is the same as before — that a charter school concept shouldn’t be denied simply because it would include religious instruction.

“We’re not showing favoritism towards a religious component, but we also don’t think we should be discriminating against it,” he said after the board meeting.

Attorney General Gentner Drummond led the legal fight against the Catholic charter school. His office is now tasked with reviewing the Statewide Charter School Board’s request to hire the First Liberty Institute for legal representation.

A spokesperson for Drummond said the Attorney General’s Office will review the request. His office did not answer whether Drummond would fight the Jewish charter school in court.

Ben Gamla would provide an online-based education that “integrates general academic excellence with Jewish religious learning,” according to its resubmitted application. Its founding governing board, originally led by Florida charter school founder Peter Deutsch, aims to enroll 400 students K-12 statewide in year one.

However, leaders of five Oklahoma synagogues and Jewish organizations said the school’s founders failed to meaningfully consult the local Jewish community before seeking to open Ben Gamla.

“Had such consultation occurred, the applicant would have been made aware that Oklahoma is already home to many Jewish educational opportunities,” they wrote in a in January.

Deutsch told the statewide board he had spoken with about 10 Jewish parents in Oklahoma before applying to open the school. He established six secular charter schools in Florida with a similar Ben Gamla name, but he said the Oklahoma school would be a completely separate entity.

Initially, the Oklahoma school’s founding board included only one Oklahoma resident, Brett Farley, who held a similar role with the defunct Catholic charter school. When , the statewide board noted Oklahoma law requires all charter school board members to live in the state.

Deutsch then submitted an updated application for state approval. The resubmitted application adds new board members and states that all are Oklahoma residents.

Among the new members are local charter founder and school choice advocate Robert Ruiz and Kandice Jeske, a .

Farley said the Ben Gamla board will file a federal lawsuit soon to challenge the school’s rejection.

“We remain confident that our charter is something that needs to be approved,” he said Monday. “The (U.S.) Supreme Court’s already said three times that states have to respect the rights of religious institutions to participate in these (state-funded) programs, and unfortunately, the state Supreme Court disagreed. And so, we’re going to seek remedy in the federal courts.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma Senate plan to has drawn mixed reactions in the week since Republican leaders unveiled it.

Groups representing active and retired educators, along with legislative Democrats, have opposed Senate Republicans’ idea to redirect $254 million that otherwise would supplement the Teachers’ Retirement System. GOP leaders said the pension system is in a strong position now that it’s 80% funded, and those extra funds could benefit urgent needs in public schools.

The plan wouldn’t take any money out of the Teachers’ Retirement System, and no retirees’ benefits would be reduced. It would place a $200 million limit on a yearly pension subsidy, called an apportionment, that has helped build up the retirement system over the past 23 years on top of regular state and employee contributions.

Doing so would free up $254 million — in a tight budget year — for a $2,500 teacher pay raise, extra school funding, expanded private school tax credits and more, Senate leaders said.

The thought of repurposing retirement funds, though, has drawn scrutiny from the state’s largest teacher union and a group representing retired educators.

Oklahoma Education Association President Cari Elledge equated the plan to mortgaging a teacher’s future for a salary increase today.

“We shouldn’t be having to be the ones who are funding our own raises,” she said.

Using money intended to benefit public school teachers to instead bolster private school tax credits also would be “very troubling,” she said. The Senate plan would put $25 million of the pension apportionment funds into the state budget for the Parental Choice Tax Credit, which helps families pay for private schooling.

Retirement funds shouldn’t be used to finance other budget priorities, especially when retirees haven’t had a cost-of-living increase to their benefits in six years, the .

“An 80% funded ratio is meaningful progress — but it is not full funding,” the organization wrote in a public statement. “Redirecting retirement dollars now risks reversing years of hard-earned stability.”

Senate leaders didn’t rule out the possibility of a cost-of-living increase if their plan succeeds. They would need support from the House for the proposal to meaningfully advance.

House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, stopped short of endorsing or rejecting the Senate idea. He said lawmakers, though, will have to someday decide what to do with the pension subsidy as the Teachers’ Retirement System inches closer to being 100% funded.

“At some point the subsidization of the pension systems, the TRS system, will need to go away,” Hilbert told reporters Thursday. “It’s just a question of is that (happening in) 2026, is that 2030, is that 2034? I think that’s the question we have to wrap our heads around as we make determinations on what is fully funded and when does that subsidy need to go away. It was never intended to be there forever.”

Much of the criticism for the funding plan stems from a misunderstanding, said Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle. He said constituents who contacted Senate Republicans believed lawmakers planned to deduct from their pension paychecks.

“My wife is a retired teacher. I don’t get to go home at night if I’m trying to draw from her pension system. That’s not what we’re doing,” Paxton said.

Senate Minority Leader Julia Kirt, D-Oklahoma City, said she heard similar fears from constituents. Her office has been “flooded with calls” since the Republicans’ announcement.

Feedback on the proposal has been full of frustration, said House Minority Leader Cyndi Munson, D-Oklahoma City.

“Pitting retired teachers against active teachers is really not a good plan,” Munson said. “It’s not a popular idea.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board voted unanimously against an application Monday for a virtual Jewish charter school, citing the state supreme court’s 2024 ruling that public funding for a religious school would violate state law.��As expected, some board members voiced support for Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation.

“I think our hands are tied,” said Board Member Damon Gardenhire, who said he didn’t see much difference between Ben Gamla’s application and a now-closed Native American charter school that featured a “spiritual component.” 

In a statement responding to the vote, Brett Farley, a member of the proposed school’s board, said organizers plan to challenge the decision in federal court. “Oklahoma families should have the freedom to choose schools that best meet their children’s needs — without losing strong options simply because they are faith-based,” he said.

The Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board is expected to deny an application for a Jewish charter school Monday, but will likely welcome organizers of the school to take them to court.

Peter Deutsch, founder of the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, and a former Democratic congressman, made his pitch for the school in January, saying that he aims to bring “a rigorous, values-driven education” to Jewish parents in Oklahoma.

“I anticipate that our board would like to grant them the application,” Brian Shellem, the board chair, told The 74. “But we can’t snub our nose at the court either.”

He means the Oklahoma Supreme Court, which ruled against the nation’s first Catholic charter school in 2024. That decision still stands after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked over that case last year. The charter board’s likely denial of Ben Gamla’s application is expected to spark another lawsuit, pitting against those who say it would violate the Constitution’s prohibition on establishing a religion. With a case over a proposed Christian charter in Tennessee already in federal court and another religious school in Colorado founded to test the same legal question, there’s little doubt that the nation’s highest court will eventually settle the debate.

“It is hard for me to imagine the court doesn’t take the issue again when it comes to it,” said Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina. But after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself in the case over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, resulting in the 4-4 tie, the justices likely in favor of religious charters, he said, “would want a case that was very strong.”

‘Pray and hear Scripture’

So far, the only case to watch is in Tennessee. Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville, a nonprofit that wants to open a K-8 Christian charter school, sued the Knox County school board because the district wouldn’t accept its letter of intent to apply. State law prohibits charter schools from being religious. 

“Students will begin to develop biblical literacy in kindergarten and begin taking catechism lessons by third grade,” according to Wilberforce Academy’s request for a quick ruling in the case. “And they will pray and hear Scripture together in a school assembly every morning.”

As St. Isidore did before them, Wilberforce argues that the nonprofit is a “private actor” and that approving its charter application would not turn it into a government entity.

The Knox County board told the court that it will “most likely” not take a position on the legality of Wilberforce’s argument. On Thursday, the board rejected asking state education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds to consider granting Wilberforce Academy a waiver so they can open the Christian school.

The Knox board, however, also said the issue of religious charter schools “deserves a thorough examination by the federal courts.” 

Judge Charles Atchley Jr, for the Eastern District of Tennessee, thinks so, too. Last week, he allowed a group of Knox County parents and religious leaders, who oppose Wilberforce’s application, . 

The case, he wrote, has the “potential to reshape First Amendment jurisprudence in the educational context” and it wouldn’t serve the court or parties involved to not have “vigorous advocacy on both sides.”

Amanda Collins, a retired Knox County school psychologist, is among those who have signed up to fight against Wilberforce Academy. She has two children still in the district and one who graduated in 2024. She grew concerned about Wilberforce Academy when she learned the organization didn’t have a history of operating charter schools in the state and feels its attorneys are using the district to “merely force an issue up the ladder to the Supreme Court.”

“In Tennessee, we have plenty of things that are underfunded,” she said. “We don’t need to be wasting our local Knox County taxpayer money on somebody’s agenda that is not intended to promote the education safety and wellness of our public school students.” 

‘The clear constitutional boundary’

Another school that could spark a lawsuit over public funds for religious schools is Colorado’s , which advertises that it offers students a “Christian foundation.” 

The school operates “pretty much just like a charter school” said Ken Witt, executive director of Education reEnvisioned, the board of cooperative educational services, or BOCES, that contracted with the school. 

As , emails between the attorney for the Pueblo County district, which allowed the school to open within its boundaries, and the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm, suggest the school was intentionally founded to test the legal argument over whether public schools can practice religion. 

After threatening to withhold state funds because of the school’s religious mission, the Colorado Department of Education funded Riverstone’s 31 students. But the state is also conducting a , which could take another year, before deciding whether it can legally provide money to the school. In the meantime, Riverstone had to close its building last week because of health and safety violations. It’s unclear whether students are learning remotely or in another facility in the meantime.

For now, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat running for governor, hasn’t issued an opinion on Riverstone, but his views on St. Isidore, the Oklahoma school, were clear. Last year, he in opposing state funding for the school.

In , he urged the Supreme Court “to preserve the clear constitutional boundary that protects both religious liberty and the integrity of our public education system.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican who is also running for governor, made a similar argument about St. Isidore before both the Oklahoma and U.S. supreme courts. 

But that’s where both he and Weiser split with the Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. In his , Skrmetti states that categorically excluding faith-based schools from public charter programs violates parents’ rights to freely exercise their religion.

To Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the conservative Manhattan Institute, it’s a matter of equity. Higher-income families can move into wealthier neighborhoods or pay private school tuition, he wrote in a on the Wilberforce case. The state, he added, already funds religious schools through education savings accounts. 

“But families who rely on charter schools are told that their options must be secular,” he wrote. 

Black, with the University of South Carolina, said the issue comes down to who authorized the school to begin with. In both Oklahoma and Tennessee, either local or state boards approve charter applications.

“That explicit state involvement, to me, makes it clear that state action is involved,” he said, “and thus the Establishment Clause applies.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — After unsuccessfully , an Oklahoma board will “more than likely” have to deny a proposal to found another publicly funded religious charter school in the state.

The Statewide Charter School Board is expected to vote next month on a Jewish charter school’s application for approval.

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Chairperson Brian Shellem said the state board is legally bound to obey an that rejected opening a religious charter school with taxpayer funds. A deadlocked U.S. Supreme Court .

That means, “we will more than likely have to deny their application,” Shellem said, though he suggested the school could do an “outstanding job” academically.

If rejected, the school founders would have an opportunity to reapply a second and final time.

Shellem said he expects the founders also might file a lawsuit if denied.

“I would not be shocked or surprised if this ignites another legal battle,” Shellem said. “So regardless of whatever happens, I really do believe our board would be sued no matter what.”

Ben Gamla would provide an education that is “intellectually rigorous and deeply rooted in Jewish knowledge, values and lived tradition,” according to its application.

Each employee, though allowed to have different religious beliefs, would be considered a “servant of the Jewish faith” and would be expected to “uphold the standards of the Jewish tradition in their day-to-day work and personal lives,” the application states.

A Florida charter school founder and former Democratic U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch said he is committed to making Ben Gamla a success in Oklahoma.

“This is something that’s been in my head for at least 10 years, if not longer, and I think the opportunity is probably the best in Oklahoma of any state in the United States of America today,” Deutsch said when presenting to the state board on Monday.

Brett Farley, who sat on the board of the now-defunct Catholic charter school, is also listed among the founding board members for the Jewish school.

The application promises a K-12 online-based education with rigorous academics. Ben Gamla, named for a high priest in Israel 2,000 years ago, also would provide instruction in Jewish religion, culture, values, rituals, texts, holidays and practices.

Like Deutsch’s secular Ben Gamla charter schools in Florida, the Oklahoma school would teach Hebrew classes. Deutsch said the Oklahoma school, though bearing a similar name, is an entirely separate organization from his Florida charter school network.

While presenting to the statewide board, Deutsch said the online school would be open to students of any background. He said he first visited Oklahoma a few years ago to explore the possibility of founding a school and visited with about 20 people, including 10 Jewish parents.

“My sense of talking to parents was there are a lot of parents that are looking for a sort of a faith-based, rigorous academic program, but there was nothing there,” Deutsch said.

State law and recent court precedent don’t allow charter schools, or any public school, in Oklahoma to adopt a particular religion. No existing charter schools in the state emphasize the Hebrew language or Judaic studies as Ben Gamla would, though multiple synagogues and Jewish community centers in Tulsa and Oklahoma City do.

An estimated , or .22% of the state’s total population.

The Ben Gamla application proposes opening later this year with a goal year-one enrollment of 400 students K-12. Its goal enrollment is 1,150 students in five years.

During Deutsch’s presentation, Shellem brought up the “elephant in the room” — why apply for approval after the board’s experience with St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School? Deutsch gave a succinct response.

“We have presented an application for you that we believe meets and exceeds all of your criteria,” Deutsch said. “And so, we expect and hope that you’re going to approve that application.”

The statewide board isn’t interested in “paying for Sunday school,” Shellem said after the meeting Monday. Rather, the board is hunting for charters that would produce strong academic results.

“I believe the Ben Gamla school could deliver that,” he said. “I think St. Isidore could have delivered that. And we are going to be bound by the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling no matter what, and we will comply with those orders. But, I think it’s unfortunate that we have to potentially deny schools that are highly qualified that could do an outstanding job for students in the areas of mathematics, science, reading (and) literature because of their desire to teach a religious component.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — A state board governing charter schools has decided it’s seen enough from Proud To Partner Leadership Academy and voted Monday to “pull the plug” on the school.

The Statewide Charter School Board made the rare decision to issue a notice of termination to the charter high school in southwest Oklahoma City. Seven board members voted in favor and two abstained.

The decision sets in motion the process of closing the school once the current academic year ends and voiding its charter contract. The 100 students attending the school, known as PTPLA, then would have to return to their neighborhood school districts or find another educational option.

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The board placed PTPLA over financial, operational and academic quality concerns. Members of the state board from the school’s leadership.

“That’s what we always ask for is a spirit of cooperation and desire to work together to improve the outcomes at the school,” board Chairperson Brian Shellem said after Monday’s meeting. “As it continued to progress, it seemed like it got harder and harder.”

State officials said they still had more questions than answers after three months of probation and multiple meetings with PTPLA.

The board’s staff made three visits to the school this fall and reported seeing only one teacher giving instruction. .

Rebecca Wilkinson, executive director of the state board, said she observed students with a computer open but not logged in, others not completing any work, seven who were sleeping or had their heads down, and some who were unable to say what course or topic they were studying, all of which raised concerns about the school’s educational quality.

PTPLA, which opened in 2024, faced scrutiny over weak finances, as well. It laid off four teachers in October and finished the previous school year in a budget deficit.

State officials also complained of missed deadlines and other unfulfilled obligations by the school’s administration.

“My opinion is it’s time to pull the plug,” statewide board member William Pearson said before the vote. “It’s time to move to termination.”

Despite the school’s struggles, PTPLA leaders told the state

School founder and Superintendent Dawn Bowles said her students now face the prospect of returning to “schools that were not serving them in the first place.”

“Our next feat will be, what is our next move to make sure that we don’t drop the ball on the ones that we’ve committed to serving,” Bowles said. “We will continue to serve them. We will continue to educate them. We will continue to provide opportunities outside of education, and we will continue to be their village as we move forward because this is what we consider to be the greater way.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

WARNER —  The banners stretch along the top of Warner Public Schools’ Event Center wall, each with the letter A as the centerpiece.

Every banner celebrates the 16 overall A grades that schools in the rural eastern Oklahoma district have received since 2013 on . A fresh one printed in 2025 signifies Warner’s high school and K-8 school were again among the top 5% highest-performing public schools in the state.

The A grades, though a heavy focus in the 800-student district, aren’t the point, Warner Superintendent David Vinson said. They’re a byproduct of students’ and teachers’ hard work. And if Warner can do it, he said, any district can.

“You have to make sure your students understand the why,” Vinson said. “It’s about their education. It’s about bettering their lives. It’s not about getting an A on the report card or about getting high marks as a school district. That’s a result or a fallout of them being high achievers individually.”

Public schools across Oklahoma are now implementing strategies Warner has been employing for years — a throughout the school day, frequent benchmark testing and . The district changed its culture and policies more than a decade ago after receiving disappointing results on state report cards.

The town of Warner, home to 1,500 residents and Connors State College, doesn’t have a wealth of industry to keep its school district flush with local tax revenue, Vinson said. State funding and community support for bond issues fill in the gap.

About 60% of Warner students come from households at or near the federal poverty line, . Many district students — 42% of whom are Native American, 31% white and 20% two or more races — have parents who work in farming and ranching in the area or drive 20 minutes north to Muskogee for industry jobs, Vinson said.

Not that he particularly pays attention to demographics. Those details, Vinson said, “tend to be used as excuses.”

High academic expectations and strict discipline are core to the district’s success, he said. Principals are quick to handle behavioral issues, leaving teachers free to teach and students better able to learn without disruptions.

The principal’s office is not a “revolving door,” he said. Any student sent in must leave with a consequence.

“I think education in general across the board has lost sight of that mentality, has lost sight of that philosophy,” Vinson said. “And that’s why you have schools that are in chaos, and you have entire schools scoring 0% proficient on assessments because the school has become so chaotic that teachers can’t teach and kids can’t learn. And there are just as smart of kids in those schools as there are in my school. They’re just not being afforded that opportunity to learn like our kids are.”

Small behavioral problems are addressed consistently, and big incidents are punished “severely,” he said. 

In Warner, that includes the rare use of corporal punishment, a method of discipline that . Simply having it on the table as an option, Vinson said, usually is enough to discourage most students from bad behavior.

While administrators handle discipline, teachers are expected to maximize every minute of their class time, a concept known in Warner as “bell-to-bell teaching.” That means no movies and no downtime, said Charla Jackson, the district’s curriculum director and elementary counselor.

Middle and high school students are discouraged from mingling in the hallways during passing periods. Instead they’re expected to hustle to their lockers and then to their next class, where a bellringer assignment is usually waiting. They’re expected to read a book if they finish their classwork early.

Literacy is a major emphasis in Warner, Jackson said. Several Warner Elementary teachers have completed in-depth training on the science of reading, and the school provides reading interventionists and tutoring for students who need extra help.

“They are the experts,” Jackson said of Warner’s teachers. “They are the ones making the difference. We just try to support them and allow them to do their job. So, that’s first and foremost.”

High morale keeps teacher turnover low, Jackson said. Class sizes, though increasing with Warner’s enrollment growth, max out at about 24 students per classroom.

But, Warner isn’t immune from the teacher shortage impacting public schools across Oklahoma.

About half of the teachers at Warner High School entered the classroom through non-traditional means, like adjunct teaching and alternative or emergency certification, Vinson said. The district tries to support those educators with training, pre-written curriculum plans and co-teaching hours with a veteran teacher.

Having fewer classroom disruptions, too, “just makes everybody a better teacher,” he said.

Several district teachers told Oklahoma Voice that behavioral issues are rarely a problem in their classrooms, but when they do occur, school administrators readily step in.

When asked what sets Warner apart, kindergarten teacher Lisa Lee pointed to elementary Principal Alan Gordon’s desk. 

“This man right here, he’s great,” Lee said. “The administration here, it just makes you feel good. You know what I mean? Like they’re backing us. They believe in us. They push us, and that makes a huge difference.”

Fourth-grade math teacher Pam White said she was ready to quit teaching before she came to Warner Elementary five years ago. White, 65, is eligible to retire but has chosen not to “because I love this school so much.”

She said the supportive administration has been “huge.”

“They’re in our classrooms,” she said. “They’ll take care of problems immediately.”

During a visit to White’s classroom, students in her afternoon math class were equally enthusiastic about their school, complimenting the quality of their teachers, school staff and principal.

But, Warner didn’t always have this culture of success. The turning point was 2012. That year, the district scored straight C’s on state report cards.

Vinson, then in his first year as superintendent, sent an email to Warner families to inform them “we are not pleased with the overall grade on these report cards for our schools.” The district’s administrators and teachers were already implementing changes, he wrote in the email. He still keeps a copy.

That’s when Warner adopted a more structured and disciplined culture, banned cellphones, started adhering to bell-to-bell teaching and aimed to have 90% of students make a proficient score on state tests. 

The following year, the district met or exceeded the statewide average on nearly every state exam.

That trajectory continued over the following decade, despite state test scoring becoming more rigorous in 2017 and COVID-19 interrupting schooling in 2020. In 2025, Warner students scored above the state average in every tested grade level, .

Families in the area have taken notice. While the town of Warner has experienced little population change, its school district has grown from 600 students at the start of the turnaround to more than 800 today. Student transfers are a major source of the spike.  

“I think a big thing is we established a culture here where kids want to succeed,” middle and high school counselor Misty Durrett said. “It’s something they take pride in.

“They know our ranking. They know where we stand. They want to maintain that.”

It’s not all structure and discipline, Vinson said. School still needs to be fun.

That’s why Warner has expanded extracurricular activities, electives and class options available to students. It’s added a competition choir, an art program, boys and girls wrestling, and a high school construction class, where students are building a house that should be ready to sell this spring. 

Students on the high school racing team design and build a dirt-track racing car that Vinson drives in competitions on the team’s behalf.

School spirit events, like Homecoming, consume entire school days. With the winter holidays approaching, the interior of every Warner school is decorated for Christmas with lights, trees and door decals.

“You have to create those opportunities for kids to enjoy school,” Vinson said. “It can’t be structure, discipline, learning, structure, discipline, learning 170 days a year.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

But the state’s request before the U.S. Department of Education has raised concerns by advocates who worry needy students could “lose both dedicated attention and resources” in Indiana and other states.   

Indiana joined Iowa this fall in asking the U.S. Department of Education for permission to merge their federal “Title” education grants – such as Title I to combat poverty and Title III to help English Language Learners — into one block grant for states and schools.

A similar attempt by Oklahoma is on hold after state Superintendent Ryan Walters resigned in September, while several state school leaders have asked U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to work with Congress to ease restrictions.

“Our goals…include less red tape for our people,” state Education Secretary Katie Jenner told the state school board. “We’re shifting towards…the flexibility to put the resources where they’re needed the most.”

At the same time, advocacy groups are shouting warnings that removing guardrails on the $30 billion in Title grants, created in 1965 as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” could lead to the country’s most needy students being left out.

In Indiana, officials have asked the U.S. Department of Education to pool the more than $350 million it receives in Title grants in the name of efficiency — to save time and millions of dollars now spent documenting how each dollar is used for specific groups of students.

Instead, the state wants the freedom to use the money for its main statewide education priorities — literacy, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) proficiency and reshaping high school education.

It’s also seeking freedom to spend federal School Improvement Grants — money now targeted at improving failing schools — to go instead toward state school choice goals.

Indiana would create an “innovation fund” with that money to help other schools nearby that students could choose instead. Such a fund would “better support a growing ecosystem of effective, innovative school models,” according to Indiana’s application.

“Students and families cannot wait — sometimes for years — for a chronically underperforming school to improve in order to receive access to high-quality instruction,” the application adds..

Both Iowa and Indiana’s request to the Education Department — with rulings expected early next year — “are expected to set a precedent for the scope of future waivers granted to other states,” the American School Superintendents Association

Indiana’s request, however, is raising concerns from several education advocacy groups — including The Education Trust, All4Ed, UnidosUS and the National Parents Union — that removing restrictions on the money will mean that students that most need extra help won’t get it.

“This approach fundamentally misunderstands — and threatens to undermine — the purpose of these targeted federal programs, which were created to address specific, documented gaps in support for vulnerable student populations,” the groups said in a . “When Indiana lists numerous state priorities without any specific commitments to individual student groups, it signals that these populations would lose both dedicated attention and resources under the proposed consolidation.”

Indiana’s request to the U.S. Department of Education to waive restrictions on the money goes beyond Iowa’s, said Nicholas Munyan-Penney, Assistant Director of P12 Policy at The Education Trust. Indiana is seeking leeway from restrictions both for the state and for individual schools and districts, while Iowa is asking for an exemption just for the state, he said.

“In its current form, Indiana’s is much more dramatic and wide-ranging in its scope and potential impact,” Munyan-Penney said.

Within Indiana, the Indiana State Teachers Association is also raising concerns.

“ISTA believes flexibility can be beneficial when paired with transparency, collaboration and a clear focus on student success,” the association . “However, we remain concerned about provisions in the waiver that could reduce input from educators and parents and divert critical resources from schools working to close opportunity gaps.”

The union also has concerns about shifting the School Improvement Grant money.

“The proposed waiver could redirect these funds to schools or programs that are not identified as low-performing, potentially diluting the impact on historically underserved students,” the union said.

And residents of Gary, a high-poverty city, also worry that the neediest students will be left out if guardrails are removed.

“When I hear…this waiver is about ‘cutting red tape,’ I don’t buy it,” Natalie Ammons, grandmother of three students in the Gary school district, testified last week in a webcast to Congressional staff. “It may be cutting something, but it’s not red tape — it’s cutting away the few protections families like mine have left.”

Asked for school officials who are seeking the waivers, the Indiana Department of Education did not suggest any. The 74 also requested a copy of feedback the department sought from residents and officials on the waiver, but the department did not provide it.

The goal of combining Title grants, which total about $30 billion a year nationally, have been a growing priority of Republican officials after a version of it was proposed in Project 25. Oklahoma and Iowa proposed merging them this spring, but concerns arose about what the U.S. Department of Education could legally allow.

Trump also put a hold on disbursing several Title grants to states this year before backing down.

In July, McMahon encouraging them “to seek creative and effective waivers for improving student academic achievement and maximizing the impact of Federal funds” and spelling out a waiver process.

Title I, which accounts for more than half of that money, is awarded to states and schools according to poverty levels and enrollment. All4Ed, estimates that more than two thirds of school districts receive some Title I money, though sometimes in low amounts if poverty is low.

Indianapolis Public Schools, for example, are scheduled to receive $15.7 million in Title I money next school year, while several smaller districts receive well under $100,000.

Texas has launched a partnership with Turning Point USA to create chapters of the right-wing organization on every high school campus in the state.

Gov. , Lt. Gov. and Turning Point USA Senior Director Josh Thifault revealed the initiative during a news conference at the Governor’s Mansion on Monday. They did not outline any plans that would require schools to initiate the clubs, but Abbott said that he expects “meaningful disciplinary action” to take place against “any stoppage of TPUSA in the great state of Texas.”

“Let me be clear: Any school that stands in the way of a Club America program in their school should be reported immediately to the Texas Education Agency,” the governor said, referring to the name of the high school clubs.

The announcement comes after Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath, who stood behind Abbott at Monday’s gathering, privately met with Thifault in early November to discuss expanding the organization’s presence in the state’s schools, which was by The Texas Tribune. Four days after that meeting, Patrick said he would $1 million in campaign funds to help bring the project to fruition.

Turning Point USA was founded by Charlie Kirk, the late right-wing activist who was often praised by conservatives as a champion of free speech and criticized for comments that many other Americans found hateful toward LGBTQ+ communities, non-Christians, people of color and women. Kirk was killed in early September while speaking on a college campus in Utah.

Following Kirk’s death, Abbott and Morath accused some teachers of posting social media remarks promoting violence and mocking the conservative activist. The state has since begun investigating submitted to the education agency about educators’ alleged comments — a move that considering teachers’ First Amendment protections. The agency has typically conducted such investigations for violations like threats or abuse.

Kirk’s organization has traditionally operated on college campuses, promoting itself as a hub for young people committed to conservative values. The group is also known for having created a so-called professor watchlist, which allows users to search for educators perceived as supporting and promoting liberal viewpoints in the classroom. Turning Point’s work has at times caused tension, particularly among who have because of the negative spotlight placed on them by the organization.

The group’s “Club America” chapters, meanwhile, operate in high schools. The clubs aim to “build strong networks, spearhead impactful initiatives, help students register to vote, and inspire meaningful conversations about the foundations of a free society,” according to .

Turning Point organizers say they have received about starting local chapters since Kirk’s death, while claiming that some students wanting to launch chapters have faced pushback from their schools’ administrators.

Republican officials in Oklahoma and Florida have also announced partnerships with Turning Point to expand the organization’s presence. Those partnerships rely on interested students to initiate the clubs, while Turning Point provides them with organizational support.

Oklahoma’s former right-wing superintendent, Ryan Walters, had to go after the accreditation of schools that refused to welcome the conservative group.

Petitions calling for of the school chapters have also emerged, with some students and parents the national organization for what they describe as “racist, homophobic, and sexist hate speech on college campuses across America.” The Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that tracks extremism, Turning Point as an organization with a strategy of sowing fear “that white Christian supremacy is under attack by nefarious actors, including immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community and civil rights activists.”

Texas’ partnership with Turning Point marks the latest attempt by Republican officials to push education further to the right, after years of them accusing public schools of indoctrinating students with left-leaning beliefs about race and gender. The state, for example, has passed laws schools to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms — an effort currently facing — and on how educators teach America’s history of slavery and racism.

Abbott on Monday sought to distance Turning Point from any particular political party, comparing it to organizations like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes currently present in many public schools.

“This is about values,” Abbott said. “This is about constitutional principles. This is about a restoration of who we are as a country.”

The governor acknowledged that it is highly unlikely he would endorse a similar initiative for more progressive, left-leaning causes, but added that “it would not be illegal” for them to exist in public schools. Abbott signed earlier this year, a sweeping state law that with an LGBTQ+ focus.

Existing partnerships between Turning Point and other states have already about the constitutionality of state governments using their resources to promote political causes in public schools, with legal experts saying it’s unclear whether the initiatives cross any lines but that they do warrant further observation.

Abbott and Patrick said Monday that Texas already has more than 500 high schools with Club America chapters. Thifault said Turning Point’s goal is to have 20,000 chapters in high schools across the nation.

The president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, Zeph Capo, recently told the Tribune that groups with a divisive political presence like Turning Point may have a place on college campuses. But he does not think that they belong in high schools, where students are more impressionable.

Disclosure: Southern Poverty Law Center has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

This first appeared on .

They were right.

In Tennessee, the nonprofit Wilberforce Academy is suing the Knox County Schools in federal court because the district refuses to allow a Christian charter school. Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti is on the school’s side. He issued last month that the state’s ban on religious charter schools likely violates the First Amendment. 

“Tennessee’s public charter schools are not government entities for constitutional purposes and may assert free exercise rights,” he wrote to Rep. Michele Carringer, the Knoxville Republican who requested the opinion. 

The legal challenge in Tennessee comes as a Florida-based charter school network prepares to submit an application to the Oklahoma Charter School Board for a Jewish virtual charter high school. Peter Deutsch, the former Democratic congressman who founded the Ben Gamla charter schools, began working on the idea long before the case over St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School even went to court. The 4-4 tie in May means that an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision blocking the school from receiving state funds still stands.��

“The prior decision shows that there’s an open question here that needs to be resolved,” said Eric Baxter, vice president and senior counsel at Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a law firm representing the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation. “We hope the court will get it right this time. We hope the federal courts get it right without having to go to the Supreme Court.”

Idaho also confronted the issue earlier this year. The state’s first charter, Brabeion Academy, initially the school as Christian. But it in August as a nonreligious school and will open as such next fall. 

Deutsch, Skrmetti and other supporters of faith-based charter schools base their argument on three earlier Supreme Court rulings allowing public funds to support sectarian schools. They say that excluding religious organizations from operating faith-based charter schools is discrimination and violates the Constitution. But leaders of the charter sector and public school advocates argue that classifying charter schools as private would threaten funding and civil rights protections for 3.7 million students nationwide.

“Unless and until the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a future case and rules otherwise, we advise all charter school associations and public charter schools to adhere to the letter and spirit of the law in their respective states,” Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said in a statement.

‘Not on our watch’

When the Supreme Court considered St. Isidore, Deutsch, was prepared to advocate for Jewish congregations to open schools that not only teach their language, but also their faith. He called the case “a historic opportunity” to bring Jewish education to thousands of children.

To Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, the debate is settled, for now. In November, he said his office would “oppose any attempts to undermine the rule of law.” 

Americans United, which advocates for maintaining church-state separation, has also issued a warning over the new school. The organization represented parents and advocates in a separate case over the school. 

“Religious extremists once again are trying to undermine our country’s promise of church-state separation by forcing Oklahoma taxpayers to fund a religious public school. Not on our watch,” Rachel Laser, president and CEO, said in a press release.

The legal fight over religious charter schools began in 2023, when the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board voted 3-2 to approve a charter for St. Isidore, setting off a closely watched case that spanned two years. At the time, the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City, a nonreligious group, called the charter board’s decision unconstitutional. Rachel Johnson, the group’s executive director, didn’t return calls or emails requesting a comment on Ben Gamla’s proposal.

None of the members who originally voted on St. Isidore serves on the state’s new Oklahoma Charter School Board. But for one person involved with Ben Gamla’s application, this is familiar territory. Brett Farley is on the proposed school’s board, according to a letter of intent the foundation submitted to the charter board in November.

Farley once held a top position with the and is also executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, which focuses on public policy issues involving the church. While preparing the St. Isidore application, with Notre Dame law Professor Nicole Stelle Garnett, whose scholarly work formed the basis of the legal argument for the school.

�Ҳ����Ա�ٳ�’s is that nonprofits running charter schools are like private contractors, and as with other publicly funded programs, can’t be excluded just because they are religious. She’s also close friends with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who recused herself from the St. Isidore case. Experts speculated that Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the three liberals on the court, resulting in the 4-4 tie.

‘Passion for religious freedom’

The virtual school, the intent letter says, would initially enroll about 40 students, focusing on “college readiness, while developing deep Jewish knowledge, faith and values within a supportive learning community.”

But some are surprised Deutsch isn’t making his bid for a Jewish charter school in Florida, where his existing, non-religious charter schools have thrived.

“I think Florida could be a good option given the new attorney general’s passion for ,” said Daniel Aqua, the director of special projects at Teach Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for Jewish education

The demand for a Jewish charter school would be much higher in Florida, which has Jewish population of nearly 762,000, compared with about 9,000 in Oklahoma. 

Charter founders in Florida submit their applications to local school districts first. The state recently added as authorizers, but Oklahoma, where organizers directly with the state charter board, offers a more streamlined process. 

‘Public Christian school’

But efforts to create publicly-funded religious schools are not limited to the charter sector. A new school in Colorado, Riverstone Academy, calls itself the state’s “first public Christian school.” Now serving 30 students in Pueblo, south of Colorado Springs, Riverstone is what is sometimes referred to as a “contract” school because districts sign agreements with private organizations to provide education services. In this case, Education reEnvisioned, one of the state’s 21 boards of cooperative educational services, or BOCES, authorized the school. 

In October, the Colorado Department of Education warned Ken Witt, the BOCES’ executive director, that the school’s per-student funding is at risk because it is “not operating in a nonsectarian nature.” The letter also went to District 49, near Colorado Springs, one of Education reEnvisioned’s member districts. 

In a response, Witt wrote that he was “alarmed at the threat” that the school might not receive funding. “We did not and legally cannot discriminate against this school on account of its religious affiliation,” he wrote. Examining Riverstone’s curriculum to determine if the school is truly sectarian, he said, would be “unconstitutionally entangling and discriminatory against different forms of religion.”

Witt told The 74 that funding usually doesn’t flow from the state to a new school until January, so it’s too soon to know whether officials will withhold funds.

‘Keep coming back’ 

“You’re going to see those within the charter sector and outside of it basically taking the same approach” — arguing that private groups delivering religious instruction can’t be denied public funds, said Preston Green, an education professor at the University of Connecticut. 

To Green, Riverstone’s identity as a “contract” school calls to mind a 1982 case, one that Garnett and other proponents of religious charter schools often highlight when they say that charters are not “state actors.” In , the Supreme Court said a Massachusetts private school that received public funds for educating teens with behavior problems did not act under the “color of state law” when it fired six employees. 

The question, experts say, is not if, but when the Supreme Court will eventually see another case about religious public schools Justice Barrett won’t have the same reason to recuse herself, Green said, and he’s not convinced that Roberts would side with the liberals a second time.

The advocates, he said, “keep coming back at this because they think that they’ll get the votes.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — While , and intensify their focus on improving Oklahoma public education, complaints have grown among teachers that they should have a more prominent role in those policy discussions.

“I’ve been begging people for years, for years, to ask actual teachers, ‘What do you need? What do you think would make these improvements?’” longtime Oklahoma public school teacher Jami Cole said. “We know what would do it, but we’re never asked. We’re just passed over for people who have more influence and power than what we have.”

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Education, particularly reading proficiency, is primed to be a top legislative issue over the coming year, with the Oklahoma State Chamber and new state Superintendent Lindel Fields already suggesting policy changes. Student literacy has emerged as , as well.

Two weeks ago, the State Chamber announced a platform of literacy-focused policies that would have struggling readers repeat a grade. Fields, who said improving reading levels is among his top priorities, floated the idea of , which currently sits at 181 days or 1,086 hours.

Both ideas have generated debate and opposition from educators, particularly among the 64,000-member Oklahoma Edvocates Facebook group, which Cole administers. Educators in the group have contended the suggestion of grade repetition and a longer school year are a sign that teachers aren’t consulted often enough in education policy conversations.

Cole said she opposes both ideas and sees a different set of needs from within her second-grade classroom. She has 23 students of widely varying education levels, she said, ranging from advanced to bordering on needing special education services.

More teaching aides, tutors and reading interventionists paired with smaller class sizes and properly trained teachers “is where the focus has to be” for state policymakers, Cole said.

“There’s so much going on in my classroom right now that I just have such a hard time with someone who has never been in the realm of teaching or education saying, ‘Oh, we just need to do this,’” she said.

The State Chamber’s plan, known as “Oklahoma Competes,” proposes a greater investment in reading coaches to assist teachers and more training in the phonics-based science of reading, along with retaining struggling readers.

The chamber announced its education plan at its State of Business Forum with endorsements from business leaders and Republican lawmakers, but not educators.

However, when developing “Oklahoma Competes,” the chamber sought input from classroom teachers, reading specialists, literacy coaches, superintendents, higher-education experts and school leaders across the state, President and CEO Chad Warmington said in a statement.

He said the chamber’s role is “not to dictate classroom practice, but to support the people who do this work every day.”

“Teachers are the frontline of this effort, and any meaningful policy solution has to reflect their experience and earn their buy-in,” Warmington said.

However, teachers still “don’t feel like they’re being heard,” said Tori Luster Pennington, president of the Oklahoma City American Federation of Teachers union, which collectively bargains on behalf of teachers in Oklahoma City Public Schools.

More interest from different groups, like the chamber, in improving education is a positive thing, she said. But her union members, who see the day-to-day realities within public schools, have given a very different list of solutions.

They cited a need for more support for students’ mental and behavioral health, she said. Chronic absenteeism also remains a persistent issue.

“Since COVID, even though we’re not in that same time, there’s still so many lingering effects of kids just not being ready and just not having the support that they need,” Pennington said. “So, we really just need more support and more engagement and helping those issues and those behaviors, and we really have to start there before we can add (school) days.”

Fields said his remarks on lengthening the school year weren’t a formal proposal, but rather a “very preliminary discussion” made during a TV interview. He said he had little dialogue with educators about the idea before floating it.

But, he’s since invited teachers to complete an to share their thoughts on a longer school year and to contribute other ideas for improving academic outcomes. The survey received nearly 4,000 responses after a week, Fields wrote in a Nov. 24 letter to teachers.

Fields said he intends to follow that up with visits to schools, education groups and teacher meetings with the goal of having open communication with teachers as he leads the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

Former state Superintendent Ryan Walters’ frayed the relationship between the agency and many educators. After Walters to lead an anti-teacher-union nonprofit, Fields, a longtime CareerTech center leader, came in with a different approach, .

“I want to visit with teachers, hear from teachers, hear their hearts and what’s on their minds,” he told reporters after an Oklahoma State Board of Education meeting Nov. 20.

State leaders should consult teachers or risk losing valuable feedback, said Rep. John Waldron, D-Tulsa.

Waldron is a former public high school teacher elected to office amid a groundswell of support for public education in 2018.

“If teachers aren’t part of the discussion, you’re not going to get to hear from teachers who have seen what a third-grade retention test does to 8 year olds,” he said. “And if you talk about adding 15 days to the school year at a time when teacher burnout is at historic highs, then yeah, you’re not going to develop a policy that makes more people want to be teachers or stay teachers.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

Death row inmate Tremane Wood’s sixth-grade English teacher was standing outside the gates of his Oklahoma prison praying for his soul — and thinking he had already been executed — when she got word that .

It was 10:01 a.m. Thursday — a minute after Wood, 46, was scheduled to receive a lethal injection — that Cindy Birdwell and other supporters in the crowd learned that Gov. Kevin Stitt had decided to accept the state Pardon and Parole Board’s recommendation and commute Wood’s sentence to life imprisonment.

There was “whooping,” tears of joy and jumping up and down, she said. Birdwell said she was humbled and grateful to have played a part in it, saying she represented educators when she spoke before the parole board last week on Wood’s behalf. She wanted the outside world to know the “little Tremane” that she knew back in Stillwater Middle School in the early 1990s, she said, and for other teachers to recognize “they have little Tremanes” in their class, too.

“Someone who is quiet sometimes, who’s ornery sometimes, who doesn’t do their work quite up to their potential, who stays back because they want more of your attention, who wants to tell you something but can’t,” she said. “We just have to slow down a little and say, ‘I see you. I hear you.’”

Stitt said he came to his 11th-hour decision not to execute Wood for his role in the 2002 robbery and murder of a young farmworker after It marked only the second time in the Republican governor’s seven-year term that he granted clemency to a death row inmate.

The from his family, religious leaders and many others were mounting as his scheduled execution drew closer. Among those closely watching were Dan Losen, an attorney and senior director at the nonprofit National Center for Youth Law, who dug deep into Wood’s childhood records and interviewed his former teachers and administrators to argue that Wood was a victim of the school-to-prison pipeline.

In a 23-page report shared with The 74 and a letter sent to the parole board, Losen concluded that school officials ignored overwhelming evidence that Wood was being beaten and neglected at home and that he suffered from learning and behavioral issues, such as ADHD and post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result. Instead of reporting that abuse or having Wood evaluated for special education services, as the law requires, they severely punished him. In middle school, Wood was suspended for six months — the end of sixth grade and the entire first half of seventh — for acting out and chronic absenteeism.

“I am so deeply grateful to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board for recommending clemency and to Governor Stitt for granting clemency to Tremane Wood,” Losen said. “I hope Tremane’s clemency, and the voices of similarly situated adults, will contribute to diminishing the unjust and disparate harm experienced by children due to inadequate training, supports and resources for schools. There are many schools that are doing a great deal to support traumatized youth, but far too many school districts, and far too many educators that still dismiss struggling students as ‘bad kids.’”

Working with Losen were Birdwell and Alton Carter, the former assistant to Wood’s middle school vice principal, who was directly involved in disciplining Wood. He told Losen school officials knew the boy was “traumatized, neglected and beaten” and just wanted him out of school.

Carter has since gone on to be a child advocate and now he, Losen and Wood are planning to work together to better inform educators and school districts on how to support abused students.

“Hopefully, Tremane Wood’s story has already helped raise awareness of the importance of trauma-informed responses,” Losen said.

Death row inmate Tremane Wood is set to be executed Thursday for a fatal stabbing he was . Now, in a last-ditch effort to save his life, the Oklahoma man’s sixth-grade teacher and a leading expert on student disability and the ties between school discipline and incarceration are calling on Gov. Kevin Stitt to spare him.

The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended in a 3-2 vote last week that Stitt commute Wood’s sentence to life imprisonment. The 46-year-old is in a matter of days for the murder of a young farmworker that took place during a botched 2002 robbery, one that his older brother confessed to committing and was sentenced to life in prison for. 

While Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond maintains Wood is a callous killer, who carried out the fatal stabbing and whose life as a violent gangster continues today behind bars, his former English teacher Cindy Birdwell said Wood’s case is the result of an education system that failed him. 

In her testimony, Birdwell described how Wood was the victim of severe emotional, physical and sexual abuse as a child and expressed regret that she and other teachers at Stillwater Public Schools had missed the signs. The first time Birdwell visited Wood in prison, she said, she offered an apology. 

“The first thing I said to him was, ‘I am so sorry, Tremane. I am so sorry that I didn’t see your pain and tried to get you relief from that pain,’” she said. “He just looked at me with his kind eyes, he smiled and said, “That’s all right.” He said that school had been his happy place, the place where he felt safe and happy.” 

The argument that Wood’s public school and the adults there could have changed his life trajectory is the basis for a 23-page report by Dan Losen, an attorney and senior director at the nonprofit National Center for Youth Law. Losen, who sent a letter to the clemency board and shared his report with The 74, had access to Wood’s education, medical, juvenile court and state Department of Health and Human Services records, and conducted interviews with numerous educators and administrators from a pivotal time when Wood was a student at Stillwater Middle School in the early 1990s. 

Losen concludes that school officials ignored overwhelming evidence that Wood was being beaten and neglected at home and that he suffered from learning and behavioral issues, such as ADHD and post-traumatic stress disorder, as a result. Instead of reporting that abuse or having Wood evaluated for special education services when the boy acted out in school or was chronically absent, they severely punished him. 

“These failures all entailed choices by adults not to evaluate, not to investigate, not to communicate, and not to intervene, despite legal requirements to do so,” Losen wrote. “These inactions by public school staff and administrators subjected Tremane to inadequate care and protection during his childhood, and had immeasurable negative consequences for his life.”

It was during this period that the school decided to suspend Wood for an extraordinary amount of time, the last several months of sixth grade and the entire first half of his seventh-grade year. Losen points out that if Wood had been evaluated and classified as a student with a disability, there would have been legal safeguards in place against excluding him from school for that long and required provisions for educating him while he was suspended, such as placement in an alternative program. 

“But when Tremane was only 12, rather than protect Tremane and find therapeutic ways to engage him in school, Stillwater school officials’ punitive response to his minor misconduct and chronic absenteeism caused Tremane to spend even more time in what school staff knew was a violent, dangerous, and neglectful home environment,” he argued. 

The reasoning for all this, Losen said, came out in what he described as “perhaps [his] most revealing interview” with Alton Carter, the assistant to the Stillwater Middle School vice principal three decades ago. “Without question [Wood] was traumatized, neglected and beaten,” Carter told Losen, and school officials “just wanted Tremane out.”

Losen pointed to academic research findings that school suspensions are . The research has led to an effort by schools across the country to like suspensions and expulsions. 

A spokesperson for Stillwater Public Schools said Wood’s case is “a deeply sad situation for everyone involved,” but that federal student privacy laws prevent the district from divulging student records. Because Wood hasn’t been a student at the district for nearly 30 years, the spokesperson said, “I could not locate any personnel who can speak to the events or circumstances of that era.” 

‘I’m not a monster’

During Wood’s clemency hearing, which hinged primarily on whether he received adequate legal defense, Birdwell was one of only two outside witnesses who spoke on his behalf. 

The former teacher said she got involved in the defense of Wood, who is Black, years ago after prosecutors portrayed him with “words like sociopath, psychopath, blah blah blah,” while an incompetent, appointed by the court failed to defend him before a nearly all-white jury. 

“I knew Tremane and I knew that he was not some soulless killer,” Birdwell said in an interview with The 74. “I’m a Christian and I believe that I felt a calling.” 

Wood was convicted of felony murder and in 2004 sentenced to death for the slaying of Ronnie Wipf, a 19-year-old migrant farmworker who was lured into a hotel room near Oklahoma City on New Year’s Eve in 2001 and robbed. While Wood acknowledges he participated in the robbery, it was his brother, Jake Wood, who fatally stabbed Wipf. Both were convicted at separate trials of killing the young man. Jake Wood died by suicide in prison in 2019.

Tremane Wood was found guilty under Oklahoma’s felony murder law, which holds someone criminally responsible for murder if they take part in a violent felony that leads to someone’s death. 

At the clemency hearing, members of the parole board appeared swayed by Wood’s lawyer, who noted that the court-appointed attorney defending him at the time had devoted just two hours to the case and, before his death, wrote an apology to Wood on the back of a business card: “It’s not your fault. It’s mine.” 

The factors that led Wood down a path of violent crime include “the institutional failures of schools and juvenile services agencies to provide a sustained, therapeutic response to Tremane’s needs as a neglected and abused child,” Amanda Bass Castro Alves, the assistant federal public defender, wrote in an email to The 74. Prosecutors surfaced his experiences as a misguided teenager to support their case for the death penalty. 

“Institutions often responded to Tremane’s acting out behaviors as a juvenile by punishing rather than helping him,” she said. “He was subjected to extended long term suspensions in middle school that left him vulnerable to the harmful influences that ultimately paved his pathway to prison.” 

After the parole board vote, Drummond, the state attorney general, reemphasized Wood’s alleged misconduct since his incarceration. 

“After this dangerous criminal took a young man’s life, he stayed fully active in the criminal world from behind bars,” Drummond said in a statement. Prosecutors presented evidence during the clemency hearing that Wood was a gang leader who allowed drugs and violence to proliferate inside the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester.

“My office will continue to pursue justice for Ronnie Wipf. We intend to make our case to the governor on why clemency should not be granted and why the death sentence, as determined by a jury, should be carried out.” 

Assistant Attorney General Christina Burns testified during the hearing that Wood’s murder conviction was based on a “series of direct personal choices,” and that early warning signs from his youth showed that he could be “impulsive, aggressive, and acted out in an antisocial manner, which can ultimately lead to antisocial personality disorder as an adult.”

“Persistent adult antisocial behavior generally begins in adolescence and it can be flagged in children with symptoms that include poor anger controls, early developmental issues, early behavioral problems, manipulation of others and a failure to accept responsibility,” Burns said, pointing to evidence that incarcerated teens experience a .

“As this case and Tremane’s most current prison activities show, these concerning personality traits are unfortunately validated by his adult behavior,” she said.

Speaking from video feed via prison, Wood said he was “a man who has deep flaws,” who has made poor decisions — including behind bars. But he doesn’t deserve to die. 

“With the pressures of your life hanging in the balance, it gets tough trying to balance it all,” he said. “But I’m not a monster. I’m not a killer.” 

Stitt, a Republican, to a death row inmate only once during his seven years in office while rejecting clemency recommendations for four others. A “does not take the process lightly” and will meet with attorneys for all parties before making a decision this week.

Bright spots turn dark again

Wood’s very upbringing was rooted in violence and trauma. As a teenager, watching his father — a police officer — tie his mother to a chair, pour alcohol on her and threaten to light her on fire before beating his two sons. 

Twice during Wood’s young life he was removed from his violent home — and twice he did well, Losen documents. In 1994, Wood was placed in a therapeutic foster home in Cromwell, Oklahoma, where he attended Butner High School for his freshman year and had “nearly perfect attendance, earned all As and Bs, and was a standout cornerback” on the football team.

“His lengthy period of success provides a clear and positive picture of what Tremane might have experienced the rest of his childhood had his disabilities been identified, had support been provided, and had the pattern of abuse and neglect that he endured been ended permanently,” Losen wrote.

Later, Wood was sent to a Department of Juvenile Justice residential program in Tecumseh and received “glowing reports of his cooperative good nature.” Each time Wood was returned home from these more structured settings, Losen said, his problems resurfaced.

Losen cites documents in Wood’s record indicating that school officials suspected him of having a disability and being in need of services but they never evaluated him. Under the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, any suspicion of a disability in a student should trigger a referral for evaluation. 

Oklahoma has “a long history of non-compliance with the provisions of the IDEA pertaining to [identifying students with disabilities]  as well as a history of unjust discipline,” Losen writes, citing a to the Oklahoma Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

It’s not alone. Losen refers to that notes an estimated 85% of young people housed in the juvenile justice system in 2007 had a disability, yet only 37% had been receiving any supports or services at school.

This is the population of public school kids that Wood now wants to help, Losen said. The researcher said he has already started working with the death row inmate to use his story to raise awareness among educators about the needs of traumatized children. It’s outreach that Alton Carter, the former vice principal’s assistant at Wood’s middle school, has already been doing and is now interested in teaming up with Wood as well, Losen said. 

The question now is whether Wood will still be here.

From cutting social safety net programs and enacting unaccountable voucher programs at the expense of public schools to limiting access to financial aid for higher education, these stormy waters are setting American students adrift, eliminating important protections and creating ever greater barriers to an equitable education that sets young people up for success as adults. 

It’s more than just money; as Congress and the Trump administration have instituted perilous funding cuts that reduced support for nutrition programs, limited undocumented students’ access to important programs and dialed back enforcement of civil rights laws, federal agencies have eliminated and undermined vital data and education research. Without this information, there is no way to know how schools are working to address academic and opportunity disparities — particularly for Black and Latino students, multilingual learners, students with disabilities and those from low-income backgrounds. 

The U.S. Department of Education by inviting states to seek waivers from the that have, for over two decades, required annual student testing and public, disaggregated reporting of those results. Allowing states to alter established assessment systems and hide data on school quality will leave parents, educators and policymakers without important information they need to help students succeed. 

In order for this to work, the federal government will need partners in states to do the dirty work. Unfortunately, history shows they’ll be amenable. 

At least three states have already begun the formal process of asking for waivers from accountability. 

Oklahoma, which already lowered the bar for proficiency on its state assessments, wants to and replace them with a series of as-yet unidentified tests throughout the year to measure student achievement in language arts and math or the Classic Learning Test, which covers a more limited knowledge base — primarily the Western and Christian canons — and has been used primarily for homeschool and private school students. The Oklahoma waiver would also mean the state could stop providing testing accommodations and alternate assessments for students with disabilities and English learners. Together, this would make it impossible to measure the academic progress of all students.

Indiana wants to redirect federal funding away from migrant students, at-risk kids, multilingual learners, children in rural areas and the lowest-performing schools. State leaders also seek to change how they rate schools, in a way that would tell families, advocates, policymakers, and others little because of the proposed methodology.

Like Indiana, Iowa wants the power to redirect federal funds away from underserved student groups. But Iowa goes a step further, asking the department to reinterpret the law to let it stop prioritizing federal funds for schools with the highest poverty levels. Not only would this be overreach by the Department of Education — legally, it can’t allow this type of change without congressional approval — it would change the rules for all states, undermining the objective of Title I to increase financial support for students in high-poverty school districts.

It remains to be seen what other ideas states will cook up under the guise of promoting innovation and reducing administrative burdens, and how those initiatives will endanger students’ educational opportunities. But the leaders of 12 states wrote to Washington earlier this year, requesting not only a robust use of federal waiver authority, but a strong deference to state law and a consolidation of federal education funding. 

To be sure, there is a place for federal flexibility. The Education Department in the first Trump administration wisely gave a year’s reprieve on annual testing when the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools. The Biden administration offered flexibility for Montana to test a new, innovative assessment model, while maintaining civil rights protections. Current federal law already allows states to experiment with innovative assessments and funding, although few states have taken advantage of these initiatives.

This isn’t some wonky technical issue; annual assessments provide important information that helps parents make educational decisions for their children, teachers to adjust classroom practices and policymakers to craft laws and allocate resources. Strong accountability measures force adults to take a hard look at how schools are serving the most vulnerable students and take action. Targeted funding provides additional opportunities for students from backgrounds long marginalized by America’s education system. 

This waiver program is just one in a series of decisions that is putting students and the country’s future at risk. Ending the collection of this data will limit everyone’s ability to see the long-term consequences of other harmful policies.   

The Education Department should reconsider its stance on waivers and instead do what’s right for students: ensure that states remain accountable for improving outcomes. Real students’ futures — and America’s future as a nation — are at stake.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s new education chief said Wednesday he has “no plans to distribute Bibles” or a biblical curriculum in public schools, reversing course from his predecessor, Ryan Walters.

State Superintendent Lindel Fields, who was , indicated Wednesday he will not fight in court to defend Walters’ order that .

A lawsuit, which , challenged the mandate and and a biblical curriculum through a public bidding process.

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“We plan to file a motion to dismiss, and have no plans to distribute Bibles or a biblical character education curriculum in classrooms,” Fields announced in a statement Wednesday. “If resources are left to be allocated, the timing is fortunate since the team and I are currently reviewing the (Oklahoma State Department of Education) budget.”

The Oklahoma Supreme Court on Tuesday gave Fields until Oct. 28 to decide whether to resolve the lawsuit by withdrawing the Bible directives.

Represented by local and national legal groups, 32 parents, students, educators and faith leaders sued Walters, the Education Department, the Oklahoma State Board of Education and the Office of Management and Enterprise Services, which oversees bidding and purchasing for state agencies.

Requiring biblical instruction in public schools and purchasing Bibles with taxpayer dollars violates the Oklahoma Constitution’s ban on state-established religion, they contend.

The Supreme Court acknowledged there’s been “significant turnover” of the public officials involved in the case. Walters to lead a conservative nonprofit, and Gov. Kevin Stitt has replaced every member of the state Board of Education since the lawsuit was filed in October 2024. The head of the Office of Management and Enterprise Services, Rick Rose, also recently resigned.

Fields became the lead defendant in the case when Stitt appointed him to finish Walters’ term as state superintendent.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said they are “encouraged” to hear Fields’ comments and are discussing next steps with their clients, according to their joint statement Wednesday. The group includes Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Freedom From Religion Foundation and the Oklahoma Appleseed Center for Law and Justice.

“The promise of separation of church and state guaranteed by the U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions means that families and students — not politicians — get to decide when and how to engage with religion,” their joint statement reads.��“The attempts to promote religion in the classroom and the abuses of power that the Oklahoma State Department of Education engaged in under Walters’ tenure should never happen in Oklahoma or anywhere in the United States again.”

The state Supreme Court hasn’t reached a final decision in the lawsuit, but it agreed in March to from purchasing Bibles and a biblical curriculum while the case is pending.

Walters’ administration already to give to Advanced Placement government classes.

In a separate case, the Court courses that would have required public schools to teach Bible stories and the teachings of Jesus.

Walters said this instruction would help contextualize the beliefs of America’s founding fathers and key historical figures. He also called the separation of church and state a myth.

Fields doesn’t oppose Bibles being present in public schools, said his spokesperson, Tara Thompson. Students already are permitted to bring their own copies to school or to access the Bible online, and many districts keep a Bible in their libraries.

However, Fields’ administration has raised doubts about whether purchasing Bibles and racking up legal fees are the best use of taxpayer dollars, Thompson said during a media briefing Wednesday afternoon.

The agency’s new leadership aims to quickly dismiss as many lawsuits as possible, she said. The Education Department’s lead attorney, Jacki Phelps, said five cases are still pending against the agency.

That includes two lawsuits challenging the social studies standards that Walters’ administration developed. Thompson said Fields would like to reach an amicable resolution with the plaintiffs in those cases, and permanently reverting to Oklahoma’s 2019 standards is a possible solution.

“Those were award-winning standards,” Thompson said. “Our schools have them, are familiar with them. And so, in the essence of time, that’s an option that’s on the table. Is that the one that gets selected? I don’t know yet. I hope to have that answered in the next couple of weeks.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

He began opening monthly board meetings with a Christian prayer, released a about protecting children from transgender students, and at odds with his agenda. The next two and a half years were marked by a steady stream of edicts, incendiary statements and disruptions that included , funding delays and conflicts with .

“Every seven days you could expect something coming. It was almost like clockwork,” said Robert Franklin, a former associate superintendent of Tulsa Tech, a district that offers career and technical education programs. 

As Walters leaves his post as state superintendent to head the Teacher Freedom Alliance, a national anti-union organization, Oklahomans say his turbulent administration offered a preview of the Trump administration’s “” approach to overhauling education. Despite about educators “closest to the child” knowing what’s best in the classroom, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, like Walters, has embraced an aggressive, top-down approach that frequently targets teachers for an assortment of perceived ills, from equity policies to protecting the rights of LGBTQ students.

In February, an Oklahoma City called his state a “testing ground for Project 2025,” the conservative Heritage Foundation’s 920-page strategy document that federal agencies are closely following. In the same way Walters welcomed like David Barton and Dennis Prager to influence a rewrite of the state’s social studies standards, the Trump administration has assembled dozens of conservative leaders and organizations to shape a for the nation’s 250th birthday.

In both cases, improving schools took a backseat to a singular — some might say, relentless — focus on the culture war. Walters’ grip on the state’s schools was “a microcosm of what we’re now facing at the federal level,” said the Rev. Shannon Fleck, executive director of Faithful America, an online community that seeks to counteract Christian nationalism. 

In Oklahoma, where she led an interfaith network, educators grew fearful for their jobs as Walters teamed up with , who created , to monitor teachers’ social media. In Washington, McMahon laid off 1,300 staffers and officials told districts nationwide that they would lose federal funds if they didn’t eliminate programs aimed at closing racial achievement gaps. 

To some right-leaning groups, Walters was a champion for parental rights whose “courage” deserves respect. “He showed that it’s possible to push back against the machine,” a supporter on Facebook. 

In part due to his use of to get himself on conservative media, Walters’ actions drew attention far outside his state. But the visibility also made him fodder for . Stephen Colbert called out the Oklahoma chief’s mandate that every classroom have a Bible and teachers incorporate scriptures into their lessons.

“Our kids have to understand the role the Bible played in influencing American history,” Walters said in a video from behind his desk last year after spending on 500 Trump-endorsed Bibles for AP Government courses. “It’s very clear that the radical left has driven the Bible out of the classroom. We will not stop until we’ve brought the Bible back to every classroom in the state.”

For Oklahoma superintendents, the mandate was no joke. 

“Most of my colleagues across the state are in the front row at their local church every Sunday, and here’s this guy forcing the Bible on them,” said Craig McVay, who retired in 2022 as superintendent of the El Reno district, outside Oklahoma City, and is now for state superintendent. 

accused Walters of trying to local curriculum, noting that students were already allowed to bring their own Bibles to school. “Especially in the smaller communities of this state, it’s very difficult to stand up against Jesus, and that’s what he forced them to do.”

He largely failed.

Most districts have no plans to change current practices, while both the and the blocked Walters’ plan to purchase 55,000 Bibles.

Trump hasn’t conditioned federal funds on Bible reading in public schools, but the federal department is expected to issue new guidance on what he called “total protection” for . Some worry the administration will over other religions in violation of the First Amendment. 

‘Trumpier than Trump’

After Trump’s November victory, Walters created a special committee to help the state comply with the president’s education agenda. In a letter to parents, he called Trump “a fearless champion of efforts to eliminate the federal bureaucracy that has shut local communities and parents out of the decisions that impact their students’ educations.” Some speculated that Walters, who did not return calls or texts to comment for this article, was for a job in Trump’s cabinet, particularly the one the president ultimately gave to McMahon. 

His frequent social media posts continue to voice unwavering support for Trump on issues such as , , and even .

Leslie Finger, an assistant professor of political science at the University of North Texas, said she wondered if Walters’ strategy toward achieving “political prominence” was to be “Trumpier than Trump.” 

She pointed, for example, to Kari Lake, the former TV news anchor and Trump ally who that former President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020. She sued, unsuccessfully, to overturn a gubernatorial election she lost to Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs in 2022 and still denies she lost her in 2024.

But while Trump chose Lake to lead, and , the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America, Walters never got the nod. To Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina, that’s surprising.

“His brazenness seems to be a character trait the administration values, which begs the question of why he stayed in Oklahoma,” Black said. It’s “somewhat likely,” he added, that Walters “lacked the insider network to get a position high enough to suit him.”

Once Trump was re-elected, Walters advanced policies that seemed to stay one step ahead of his hero. He pushed through that expect students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results,” even though ruled there was no evidence that the Biden campaign “stole” the election. , the standards present the “full and true context of our nation’s founding and of the principles that made and continue to make America great and exceptional.” The Oklahoma Supreme Court the state from implementing them after parents, teachers and faith leaders sued, arguing the standards require teaching from the Bible. 

Over 1,300 miles away, the Trump administration is undergoing a similar overhaul of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., to replace “ideological indoctrination or divisive narratives that distort our shared history.” Exhibits, , focus too much on “how bad slavery was” and offer “nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”

In line with Trump’s immigration policy, Walters to round up undocumented students at school and instructed districts to collect parents’ citizenship status when they enrolled their children. The state legislature opposed the plan.

The federal government has attempted to bar undocumented children from attending Head Start and issued that prohibits students, including those in high school, from receiving tuition assistance for career and technical education.

‘Christian patriot’

To Black, the law professor, Walters was “so far out of bounds” that he “cared even less about rules …than the current administration.”

He required teachers from New York and California, seeking to work in Oklahoma, to take a to screen out “woke” applicants — a move said would discourage efforts to recruit teachers. But as with Trump, his boundary pushing endeared him to Christian nationalists, who maintain a strong foothold in Oklahoma. One group, the Tulsa-based City Elders, considers Walters a “Christian patriot” who worked to advance their mission of “establishing the kingdom of God” on earth and infusing government with Christian principles.  

“This is a war for the souls of our kids,” Walters in 2022. “The brilliance of our founders and the acknowledgement of almighty God — that’s where our blessings come from. That’s where our rights came from … and the left wants us to take that out of schools.”

Last August, when GOP lawmakers called for investigations into Walters’ management of state education funds, members of the group school board meetings and were the first to sign up to speak. 

City Elders hosted him again at a gala in March, but , organized by groups that oppose Christian nationalism, gathered outside the Tulsa-area conference center. Some waved signs that said “Impeach Walters,” calling him a “danger” to education.

A month later, he came face-to-face with critics during a “town hall” event organized by the Turning Point USA chapter at Oklahoma State University, considered one of the colleges in the country. Co-founder Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated Sept 10 in Utah, founded the organization to mobilize college students around conservative ideas and encourage open debate.

But Walters couldn’t finish his sentences amid the angry chants about his and his following the death of a nonbinary student last year. He called Nex Benedict’s death, later determined to be a suicide, a tragedy. But he also used the moment to voice opposition to schools that allowed students to use facilities that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth. His administration, he said, would not “lie to students” about being able to change their gender. 

At the time, he was still a potential candidate for governor. In June, suggested that while Walters trailed frontrunner Attorney General Gentner Drummond by 27 percentage points, a path to the Republican nomination wasn’t impossible. Some question why a politician with Walters’ ambition would walk away for a new position with an uncertain future. He was also eligible to run again for state superintendent.

“It’s pretty rare for someone to resign [during] their first term in a position when they’ve got another one available,” , a civics and voting rights advocate, said on a �ճ�ܰ����岹��.��

While Walters and were once close, observers say the superintendent had no chance of getting the . They had a series of on issues ranging from Walters’ attempt to take over the Tulsa schools to his support for immigration raids at school. Walters’ allegiance to Trump may have worked against him, said Jeffrey Henig, a professor emeritus of education and political science at Teachers College, Columbia University. 

“There’s an odd lack of symmetry in the politics around Trump,” he said. “Crossing him is close to political suicide for Republicans, but trying to read from his script does not confer equal and proportionate success.”  

When McMahon visited the state in August, she a charter school tour with the governor’s office, not Walters — a move widely viewed as a political snub. 

In a farewell letter to parents, he counted eliminating “woke indoctrination” and teacher recruitment efforts among his accomplishments. He that 151 special education teachers, including 34 from out of state, would receive signing bonuses of $20,000. It was Kirk’s death, he r, that inspired him to take the job at the Teacher Freedom Alliance and that “national leaders” recruited him for the position.

“We have to have more people step up on the national stage to protect this country’s values,” he said. “We’ve got to get rid of the teachers unions.” 

In typical outsized fashion, Walters didn’t just pay his respects to Kirk. He mandated that schools hold a moment of silence on Sept. 16 at noon — at a time when students would be eating lunch or enjoying recess. 

He followed up with a declaration that all Oklahoma high schools would open a Turning Point USA club, even though leaves those decisions up to local school boards.

To Franklin, who took opposite sides with Walters on issues like Christian charter schools, the moment was telling. The former Tulsa Tech official said it underscored why Walters, despite the backing of right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty, might struggle outside of Oklahoma.

As Walters assumes a new national position, Franklin said that unlike Kirk, the former chief never sparked a “groundswell of ‘Oh my God, we need to listen to this guy,’ ” Kirk’s organization had over 900 college chapters prior to his death and has since to establish thousands more. His campus appearances could draw thousands.

“The Charlie Kirk phenomenon only strikes every once in a while, and I don’t think Walters has that kind of following.”

He once called Oklahoma’s teachers union a “terrorist organization.” Now state Superintendent Ryan Walters is threatening to “destroy” teachers unions nationwide.

A former small-town history teacher who waged a culture war against educators over issues such as sexually explicit books and criticism of President Donald Trump, Walters announced his resignation to become CEO of the , an anti-union initiative of the , a conservative think tank. 

“We will build an army of teachers to defeat the teachers unions once and for all,” he told Fox News. “This fight is going national and we will get our schools back.”

Walters was expected to run in the Republican primary for . But he had increasingly alienated “pretty much everyone” in state leadership, said Deven Carlson, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma. “I do think there was still some grassroots support in pockets of the state, but it wasn’t clear how that was going to translate to the things you might need to win, say, the 2026 governor’s election.”

First as education secretary to Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt and then as the state’s elected schools chief for nearly three years, Walters established a reputation for a headline-grabbing and at times even outlandish brand of Christian nationalism. Even before his election in 2022, Walters singled out teachers he considered too “woke” for Oklahoma schools. Once in office, he moved quickly to revoke the teaching certificates of educators accused of violating laws against so-called “divisive concepts.”

With little initial opposition from the state’s GOP majority, he made news almost daily for controversial actions such as threatening to take over the Tulsa schools and mandating Trump-endorsed classroom Bibles. As recently as this week, he announced that every high school in Oklahoma would have a , the youth-focused conservative organization Charlie Kirk founded in 2012. Most of the Wednesday’s Fox news show Walters joined focused on the growth of the organization since Kirk was killed Sept. 10 in Utah.

“We’ve never seen a national movement like this of so many kids, so many parents so willing to step up and say, ‘Listen, we have got to get the country back on track.’ ” he said. “We’ve got to turn away from this radical leftism.” 

As Walters kept a of appearances on right-wing media, at home, Republican lawmakers began criticizing the state chief for , like delaying funds to schools for security upgrades. Former state officials said he failed to communicate about . He promoted stronger literacy instruction, recently launching , but his divisive manner overshadowed his efforts to focus on learning. 

One Republican who repeatedly questioned Walters’ competence for the job and supported investigations into whether he should be impeached said the superintendent’s departure is a “very positive move for Oklahoma.”

Former state Rep. Mark McBride said he hopes the person Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt appoints as an interim replacement has “no agenda other than working with students and teachers to improve outcomes.” McBride, who led an education subcommittee in the House, said he would also “love to serve Oklahoma in this capacity,” but had not yet spoken with the governor about the possibility.

Walters was an early advocate of the Freedom Foundation’s efforts to weaken the teachers unions. He appeared at the group’s and Teacher Freedom Summits. 

“They’re about power and they’re about money,” he said of the unions at last year’s event. “They could care less about student test scores.”

When the foundation launched the new Alliance earlier this year, Walters issued a endorsing the initiative, which prompted a state lawmaker to ask Oklahoma’s attorney general to investigate its legality.

Corey DeAngelis, a school choice advocate and outspoken union critic, said Walters is the right person for the job. 

“Ryan Walters has the tenacity needed to take the unions head on,” said DeAngelis, a senior fellow with the American Culture Project, an effort to mobilize independent voters around issues such as school choice and tax relief. “His fearless advocacy against the status quo is exactly what we need to lead a mass exodus from the teachers union cartel.”

An enthusiastic MAGA supporter, Walters frequently voiced his admiration for President Trump, even directing schools last year to of him praying for the president. 

But the administration hasn’t always reciprocated. 

Education Secretary Linda McMahon during an August stop to the state. Carlson suggested the Education Department likely coordinated the visit with Stitt’s office and, with “little love lost” between the two men, “Walters didn’t make the itinerary.”

Department officials have also been critical so far of his proposal to eliminate federal testing requirements in the state and said to suggest McMahon would likely approve it.

While Stitt, current chair of the National Governor’s Association, initially supported Walters’ political aspirations, the two were no longer “on the same page,” Carlson said. “I think the governor became frustrated with the effects that Walters initiatives were having on his economic development agenda.”

The state, for example, received negative attention for being 50th in education in .

Not long before Walters jumped into politics, he was an award-winning history teacher in the McAlester school district, not far from the Arkansas state line. Former students saw him as fair and inclusive, not the anti-LGBTQ firebrand he later became as state superintendent. His love for teaching impressed McBride when the two first met in 2018. 

Despite a string of scandals, Walters always bounced back. A probe into his management of state funds last year found no misconduct or missing money. Most recently, he was cleared of any criminal charges following into why a movie with nude scenes, Jackie Chan’s 1985 action film “The Protector,” was playing on a TV in his office during a state school board meeting. Oklahoma County District Attorney Vicki Behenna said she found insufficient evidence that he had broken the law.

‘Constant distraction’

The episode was one of many that kept Walters in the news. Education advocates, who Walters frequently accused of indoctrinating students with left-wing ideas, largely expressed relief Wednesday night.

“We can get back to the true focus of teaching without the constant distraction and headlines from the  state superintendent,” said Jami Jackson-Cole, a teacher who moderates a Facebook group of Oklahoma educators and advocates. 

As Walters departs next month, they’re wondering who will take his seat, not just for the remaining 15 months of his term, but in the 2026 election. 

Along with McBride, others rumored to be possible candidates for interim superintendent include , Stitt’s education secretary. A former member of a charter board, she voted in favor of approving the nation’s first religious charter school. Earlier this year, the U.S. Supreme Court split 4-4 on whether the school violated the First Amendment, allowing the state supreme court’s decision prohibiting tax dollars from funding the school to stand.

Regardless of who completes the rest of Walters’ term, advocates are also beginning to examine the records of those . Republican candidates include Rob Miller and John Cox, two superintendents. Two former Tulsa board members, Democrat Jennettie Marshall and independent Jerry Griffin, have also filed paperwork to enter the race.

With Walters “being out of the picture, maybe Oklahomans who are serious about public education can now get to work turning this ship around,” said Erika Wright, an education organizer for Oklahoma Appleseed, a nonprofit law firm.  

She’s been working with a coalition of organizations to develop a for the state’s schools that focuses on the teaching profession, student performance, funding for education and school safety. 

“The possibilities that lie before us are really exciting,” she said, “but the work is not done.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma signing bonus program, intending to fill a in public schools, will reward 151 special education teachers up to $20,000 this school year.

The Oklahoma State Department of Education announced Tuesday the program will award signing bonuses to 34 experienced special education teachers who came from out of state and to 117 new teachers who recently became certified for the first time.

The program exceeded the agency’s initial goal of recruiting 110 special education teachers to work with students with disabilities. About 17% of public school students in Oklahoma are receiving services for a disability, .

Out-of-state teachers coming to Oklahoma were eligible for a $20,000 signing bonus this year and another $5,000 in the 2026-27 school year if they remain in the same district. 

Newly certified special education teachers qualified for a $10,000 signing bonus and a potential $2,500 retention bonus next year.

The initiative attracted educators from at least 17 states and Japan, the Education Department reported. Seventy-nine Oklahoma districts are participating.

Recipients of the signing bonuses are moving from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oregon, South Carolina and Texas, the agency said.

Agency spokesperson Madison Cercy said signing bonus recipients coming from California have been instructed to take an “America First” assessment. The Education Department developed the test with the conservative media entity PragerU to weed out educators with “woke agendas” who relocate from progressive states.

The agency also sent the notification to teachers moving from New York, Cercy said, though that state wasn’t one the Education Department initially listed in its announcement of the signing bonuses.

Another state agency that oversees teacher certification testing, the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability, has . 

mandates that the Oklahoma State Board of Education “shall issue a certificate to teach to a person who holds a valid out-of-state certificate.” Oklahoma statutes require no further assessment besides a criminal history check for teachers who are already certified and moving from out of state.

The state Education Department , saying at the time it had budgeted $1.875 million from the federal fund IDEA Part B, which supports students with disabilities.

This is the agency’s third round of signing bonuses for teacher recruitment under state Superintendent Ryan Walters.

Walters has leveraged hefty signing bonuses to attract hundreds of certified educators to return to teaching after having left the profession or to move to Oklahoma from other states.

In 2023, his administration offered between $15,000 and $50,000 to early elementary and special education teachers. The effort , though .

The second wave of signing bonuses granted up to $25,000 to educators who accepted hard-to-fill math and science positions in rural middle and high schools. That initiative last year.

“Through investing in our educators and rewarding excellence we are making sure every child in Oklahoma has the opportunity to succeed,” Walters said Tuesday.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

was originally reported by Nadra Nittle of .��

After a public backlash for pushing , State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters is now mired in scandal for an entirely different reason — images of nude women on his office television.

Two members of the Oklahoma State Board of Education are accusing Walters — who was on Trump’s shortlist of education secretary candidates last year — of screening graphic images on a television connected to his computer Thursday during a closed-door meeting focused on teaching credentials and student attendance.

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Now the state’s Republican leaders, including Gov. Kevin Stitt, say they support a probe into the conduct of the conservative superintendent who has and backed bans of . for his policies and rhetoric, which came under scrutiny last year when a nonbinary Oklahoma teenager named died after a physical altercation with classmates.

In a statement on Sunday, Walters denied the accusations, which he called “politically motivated attacks” as he prioritizes parental rights and rejects “radical” education agendas.

“Any suggestion that a device of mine was used to stream inappropriate content on the television set is categorically false,” he said. “I have no knowledge of what was on the TV screen during the alleged incident, and there is absolutely no truth to any implication of wrongdoing.”

Board members Ryan Deatherage and Becky Carson allege that, in Walters’ office last week, they saw full-frontal nudity on the TV.

about what she’d seen, demanding he turn off the television at once, and he complied.

Deatherage said he witnessed the exchange between Carson and Walters. A third board member, who said he did not see the confrontation, described the superintendent as “shook up” and “obviously a little flustered or embarrassed” during the executive session.

Quinton Hitchcock, a spokesman for Walters, denied that Walters bears responsibility for the explicit content shown, telling The Oklahoman that multiple people have access to the superintendent’s office. He also described the state board — which has challenged Walters repeatedly over issues including free student lunch, teacher assessments and his partnership with an online school — as “hostile” to the superintendent.

“These falsehoods are the desperate tactics of a broken establishment afraid of real change,” Walters said in his statement. “They aren’t just attacking me, they’re attacking the values of the Oklahomans who elected me to challenge the status quo. I will not be distracted. My focus remains on making Oklahoma the best state in the nation, in every category.”

in a new study on school quality by personal finance company Wallet Hub.

As Walters accuses the board members of ulterior motives, the governor expressed his trust and appreciation for the State Board of Education. “They are volunteers who are sacrificing their time to serve Oklahoma students,” Stitt said. “Should these allegations be true, all I can say is that I am profoundly disappointed.”

The board members’ allegations have initiated (OMES).

“The accounts made public by board members paint a strange, unsettling scene that demands clarity and transparency,” , a Republican, in a statement. “Senator [Adam] Pugh and I appreciate the quick action by OMES to help coordinate through this situation to get details on exactly what happened. More transparency is essential before strong conclusions can be drawn.”

Oklahoma House Speaker Kyle Hilbert said in a statement that the allegations against Walters warrant a third-party review.

“I urge the State Superintendent to unlock and turn over all relevant devices and fully cooperate with an investigation,” said Hilbert, a Republican. “If no wrongdoing occurred, a prompt and transparent review should quickly clear his name.”

Deatherage and Carson want to see Walters held accountable in the same way a teacher would be under these circumstances.

“We hold educators to the strictest of standards when it comes to explicit material,” Deatherage said in a statement. “The standard for the superintendent should be no different.”

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma technology university announced it has formed a partnership with the Caddo Nation to give its members enhanced training in the renewable energy and construction fields.

Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology, which is based in Okmulgee, said it will work with the Caddo Nation Economic Development Authority to have the new program operational by fall.

The partnership will offer programs focused on renewable energy development, construction and infrastructure, environmental remediation and utility development to create more career opportunities and support nation building by assisting in orphan well cleanup and solar energy initiatives.

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Brandon Dinsmore, tribal outreach and workforce program specialist, said the university does not know how many students will participate in the skills programs and are still determining tuition rates. The training will primarily take place at the Caddo Nation campus in Binger.

“This partnership represents a transformative moment for our Nation,” said Bobby Gonzalez, Caddo Nation chairperson in a statement. “By joining forces with OSUIT, we’re not just creating jobs – we’re building the foundation for generational prosperity and economic sovereignty that will benefit our people for decades to come.”

Participants in the program can earn micro credentials, a program focused in a small area of study that upon completion, demonstrates the understanding of specific skills that are required in a workforce. If a participant decides they would like to obtain a degree toward a specific program, they convert those into college credit. Participants will also be able to earn industry certifications in non-credit training programs.

“This agreement exemplifies OSUIT’s commitment to serving Oklahoma’s diverse communities,” said Trey Hill, vice provost at Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology, in a statement. “Our industry-aligned programs and state-of-the-art facilities provide the perfect foundation for preparing Caddo citizens for high- paying careers in these rapidly growing sectors.”

Oklahoma State University Institute of Technology has previously pursued partnerships with other tribes, including Cherokee Nation Career Services and the Muscogee (Creek) Nation to develop a program. They have also partnered with the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma Division of Commerce to develop a program.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma County lawsuit challenging a Catholic charter school has been dropped following the school’s failed appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The upheld an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision against permitting the country’s first religious charter school to begin operating in the state with taxpayer funds.

While Catholic leaders, a small state agency and Attorney General Gentner Drummond , a separate lawsuit opposing the religious school . The coalition of local parents, faith leaders and public education advocates who filed the Oklahoma County case announced Monday they have their lawsuit in light of the higher court decisions.

The plaintiffs and their legal counsel — who include attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom from Religion Foundation — declared victory while dropping their case.

“We’re pleased that the courts stopped this direct assault on public education and religious freedom,” said Daniel Mach, of the ACLU. “ Public schools must remain secular and welcome all students, regardless of faith.”

The Oklahoma Parent Legislative Advocacy Coalition was the first plaintiff in the lawsuit. Chairperson Misty Bradley said the group is grateful for those who supported their case and for the attorney general’s “successful efforts to uphold Oklahoma’s constitution and protect its taxpayers and public schools.”

Officials from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa first applied to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in 2023. Later that year, the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, a small state agency that oversaw online charter schools, approved the application to open St. Isidore, permitting it to operate with taxpayer funds.

St. Isidore would have offered an online education to students in all parts of the state. Although students of any religion or no faith could have attended the school, St. Isidore would have taught Catholic doctrine and functioned according to church beliefs.

The Oklahoma County lawsuit was the first to be filed against the school, followed by the attorney general’s request that the state Supreme Court intervene. The state Supreme Court that a religious charter school would be unconstitutional.

Both St. Isidore and the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case in May. 

The eight justices who heard the case deadlocked at 4-4, which allowed the state Supreme Court’s decision to stand.

Catholic leaders, who did not immediately comment on the Oklahoma County case Monday, said they are exploring other options to provide an online Catholic education.

Gov. Kevin Stitt, a supporter of St. Isidore, said the matter of publicly funded religious charter schools is “far from a settled issue” and suggested it would reach the U.S. Supreme Court again.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

OKLAHOMA CITY — Those who knew Melissa Evon the best “laughed really hard” at the thought of her teaching family and consumer sciences, formerly known as home economics.

By her own admission, the Elgin High School teacher is not the best cook. Her first attempt to sew ended with a broken sewing machine and her mother declaring, “You can buy your clothes from now on.”

Still, Evon’s work in family and consumer sciences won her the 2025 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year award on Friday. Yes, her students practice cooking and sewing, but they also learn how to open a bank account, file taxes, apply for scholarships, register to vote and change a tire — lessons she said “get kids ready to be adults.”

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“Even though most of my career was (teaching) history, government and geography, the opportunity to teach those real life skills has just been a phenomenal experience,” Evon told Oklahoma Voice.

After graduating from Mustang High School and Southwestern Oklahoma State University, Evon started her teaching career in 1992 at Elgin Public Schools just north of Lawton. She’s now entering her 27th year in education, a career that included stints in other states while her husband served in the Air Force and a break after her son was born.

No matter the state, the grade level or the subject, “I’m convinced I teach the world’s greatest kids,” she said.

Her family later returned to Oklahoma where Evon said she received a great education in public schools and was confident her son would, too.

Over the course of her career, before and after leaving the state, she won Elgin Teacher of the Year three times, district Superintendent Nathaniel Meraz said.

So, Meraz said he was “ecstatic” but not shocked that Evon won the award at the state level.

“There would be nobody better than her,” Meraz said. “They may be as good as her. They may be up there with her. But she is in that company of the top teachers.”

Like all winners of Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, Evon will spend a year out of the classroom to travel the state as an ambassador of the teaching profession. She said her focus will be encouraging teachers to stay in education at a time when Oklahoma struggles to keep experienced educators in the classroom.

Evon herself at times questioned whether to continue teaching, she said. In those moments, she drew upon mantras that are now the core of her Teacher of the Year platform: “See the light” by looking for the good in every day and “be the light for your kids.”

She also told herself to “get out of the boat,” another way of saying “take a leap of faith.”

Two years ago, she realized she needed a change if she were to stay in education. She wanted to return to the high-school level after years of teaching seventh-grade social studies.

The only opening at the high school, though, was family and consumer sciences. Accepting the job was a “get out of the boat and take a leap of faith moment,” she said.

“I think teachers have to be willing to do that when we get stuck,” Evon said. “Get out of the boat. Sometimes that’s changing your curriculum. Sometimes it might be more like what I did, changing what you teach. Maybe it’s changing grade levels, changing subjects, changing something you’ve always done, tweaking that idea.”

Since then, she’s taught classes focused on interpersonal communication, parenting, financial literacy and career opportunities. She said her students are preparing to become adults, lead families and grow into productive citizens.

And, sure, they learn cooking and sewing along the way.

“I’m getting to teach those things, and I know that what I do matters,” Evon said. “They come back and tell me that.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

I’ve seen firsthand how overwhelmed and disconnected today’s youth are becoming, losing faith in themselves and one another. Students also get judged from the outside quite often — on test scores, on behavior, on penmanship. But when they craft their own art, they begin to find their voice and a unique point of view that can be expressed with and beyond words. Once they find that voice — the one they didn’t know they had — my students want to use it for something that matters.

One of the biggest obstacles to civic engagement for students is that most are never asked to serve their community, despite having so much to give. They just need to be invited in. 

That’s why, for nine years, I have found ways to integrate student creativity with civic work through projects that accommodate young people’s differing abilities and interests. There are plenty of programs that create pathways for educators like me to engage young people in service learning; for example, my class has found many creative opportunities through programs like and .

When I tell my students at John Marshall Enterprise High School that the art they’re creating is going to a stranger — that it’s going to help someone they’ll never meet — it is hard for them to comprehend how such a small act can truly make a difference in someone’s life.

In my Family & Consumer Sciences classes, for example, my students apply lessons from their science, social studies and math classes in creative service projects. One of our favorites this year was making neck-cooler ties for . These fabric ties provide a cooling effect when worn around the neck and were donated to servicemen and women stationed in desert regions of the world, where heat is dangerous and relief is limited.

We explored the different properties of fabrics and how they might be used in various applications and regions of the world: natural fibers such as cotton are breathable and better for people with allergies, and won’t melt to skin like polyester or polycotton will in case of fire. We calculated the dimensions of each tie: 5 inches wide, 11 inches long, a quarter-inch for the seam. We learned how hydroponic beads, which are sewn into the ties, work: The absorbent nature of hydrogel expands the beads when soaked in water, which helps keep the fabric cool for hours.

We then sewed the ties ourselves and shipped them out. Even students who might not get an A in math learned about its applications through something tangible, something they could feel. This project wasn’t just art; it was science, it was math, it was compassion.

Through art, my students connect with the world and make sense of hard things. Many of them have faced trauma, and some are still living through it. I can see the healing taking place when students are looking down at their art and working with great focus. Their faces show the engagement of their heart.  

For Mental Health Awareness Month, we joined the , which uses flowers to help break the stigma around mental health. Students made “tulip garden” art in the classroom and planted bulbs in the gardens outside. Even these small acts help students to feel connected and capable of creating change. Art is a vehicle for driving away loneliness and embracing hope and gratitude.��

More than ever, students need to feel like they belong to their schools, their communities and the world around them. They need to know that their voices, ideas and kindness can make a difference. I see that happen when my class writes letters to veterans and creates encouragement cards for refugees, people experiencing food insecurity at food banks, seniors in isolation, children who are ill and young students just starting school. These letters and cards are delivered across our city, the country and even make their way around the world. Such simple acts of creativity invite kids and offer them a way to feel seen, connected and involved. 

Arts education belongs at the heart of how schools teach students civic engagement, especially for those who don’t always feel invited to the table — those who’ve been overlooked or left out. Creativity provides a way in, allowing students to see that they matter and can make an impact. When they create something meaningful and send it into the world, something shifts. They begin to see themselves differently. They start to see themselves as part of the solution.

In my classroom, students see that art isn’t just about making something look pretty; it’s about creating something that matters. Whether it’s painting rocks with kind messages for veterans, decorating socks for Los Angeles students impacted by wildfires or creating origami and love links — colorful paper chains filled with encouraging words — for young children, these small acts of creativity help students believe they have something to give. And the truth is, they all do. They don’t have to be at the top of their class or in student government to make an impact. They just have to be willing to try.

But the reprieve may be short-lived. Both supporters and opponents recognize the constitutional debate over whether publicly-funded charter schools can explicitly promote religion isn’t settled.

“It’s obviously disappointing,” said Nicole Garnett, a Notre Dame University law professor. But the decision — a 4-4 tie — doesn’t set a precedent, she said. “The issue remains alive and will undoubtedly resurface soon.”

�Ҳ����Ա�ٳ�’s novel legal argument in favor of charters being private inspired Catholic church leaders in Oklahoma to apply for a charter in 2023. But ironically, her long and close friendship with Justice Amy Coney Barrett is the likely reason for the split decision. 

As The 74 reported in March, Garnett and Barrett met as Supreme Court law clerks in 1998, both taught at Notre Dame and raised their children in the same neighborhood. Josh Blackman, an associate professor at the South Texas College of Law, and a friend of �Ҳ����Ա�ٳ�’s, predicted at the time that the case “might go to a 4-4 decision.”

“I feel bad for Nicole,” he said. “This is her life’s work.”

Barrett recused herself from the case, and in a simple , the justices said the state supreme court’s ruling last year to deny a charter to St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School stands — for now.

“It’s a day of celebration and relief,” said Robert Franklin, a former member of the Oklahoma virtual charter board who voted against the school’s application. “I am not so naive [to think] that the matter doesn’t find breath again at a later date, but for today, it’s a day to exhale.”

While the opinion doesn’t say how the justices decided, experts largely suspect that Chief Justice John Roberts played a central role and sided with the three liberals on the court. Early in April’s oral arguments, he appeared skeptical of the school’s assertion that Oklahoma didn’t create or control the school.

The conservative-leaning court, which has increasingly ruled in favor of expanding religious freedom, agreed to hear the case just four days after President Donald Trump took office. Roberts is the author of the three most recent opinions that Garnett and other scholars consider to be a “trilogy” — a over whether a religious school could participate in a state program offering playground resurfacing materials and two cases involving state funds for religious education, in and . But Roberts is also known for restraint. The potential disruption to nearly 8,000 schools nationwide may have proved to be too much for the chief justice, said Robert Tuttle, a professor of law and religion at the George Washington University Law School.

The case “seemed to many people like a vehicle for expanding the idea of school choice as broadly as possible,” Tuttle said. But he speculated that the court — most likely Roberts — “recognized the concerns … that this would have the possibility of killing charter schools.”

He agrees with Garnett that a similar case could rise to the court, but for now, the matter remains unsettled. Even in cases of a tie, justices can issue their own opinions, something they did not do in this case.

“If it were settled, then you would have opinions,” he said. But the case presented multiple “red flags under the Establishment clause.” Thursday’s ruling, he said, means that when it comes to faith-based charter schools, the line between religious freedom and government entanglement is unclear. “What we know is that the Supreme Court doesn’t know it either.”

The decision leaves many Catholic families in Oklahoma, especially those in rural areas, without a publicly funded faith-based option. In a statement, Archbishop of Oklahoma City Paul Coakley and David A. Konderla, the bishop of Tulsa, said that they are “exploring other options for offering a virtual Catholic education to all persons in the state.”

Days before the oral arguments, Starlee Coleman, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, warned the court and the Trump administration that declaring charter schools to be private would threaten funding for students since state laws define them as public. 

Others argued that a decision in favor of religious charter schools would compromise civil rights protections since many faith-based schools deny admission or services to LGBTQ students or kids with disabilities.

“Families choose public charter schools because they provide innovative, student-centered learning environments tailored to students’ unique needs and because they are accountable to families and taxpayers,” Coleman said in a statement Thursday. “That’s what makes them special, and that’s what we’re here to protect.” 

The administration, as part of its school choice agenda, has heavily promoted charter schools since January by removing Biden-era regulations and increasing funding. But some experts say states might tweak charter school laws to clarify that charters are public despite being operated by private organizations.

“The fact that it was as close as it was is a signal. This is a chance to make some changes because it’s going to come up again,” said Preston Green, an education and law professor at the University of Connecticut. He has recommended that states amend laws to clarify that board members for charter schools are public officials.

Green recognizes that Thursday’s outcome may have been a fluke. A recusal such as Barrett’s is unlikely to happen again. “There’s just no guarantee that Coney Barrett is going to side with the liberals. There’s no guarantee that Roberts — or whoever it was — would come out that way the second time around.”