The Statewide Virtual Charter School Board will vote on an application backed by the Catholic church for the creation of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, planned by its organizers to offer an online education for kindergarten through high school initially for 500 students and eventually 1,500.
The board is a state entity that considers applications for charter schools – publicly funded but independently run – that operate virtually in Oklahoma. The board’s three voting members all were appointed by Republican state officials.
The school would cost Oklahoma taxpayers up to $25.7 million over its first five years of operation, its organizers said. The idea for the school came from the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. The law school at the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic institution in Indiana, helped with the application.
Any legal fight over St. Isidore could test the scope of the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment “establishment…
Read More
