A religious charter school faces its day in court

Apr 01, 2024

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond speaks.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond. | Sue Ogrocki/AP Photo

CHURCH V. STATE — The future of American charter schools will be shaped in an Oklahoma courtroom this week.

— Oral arguments over the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School are scheduled to occur in front of the state’s Supreme Court on Tuesday, less than a year after officials approved the country’s first publicly funded religious charter campus.

— Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican widely seen as a future gubernatorial candidate, will lead arguments on behalf of the state in the suit he filed late last year to block St. Isidore from opening.

— He’ll face attorneys for the Alliance Defending Freedom (the conservative Christian legal fund that led the successful legal campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade) and Dechert LLP, who are representing the state’s virtual charter school board and St. Isidore, respectively.

— Tuesday’s hearing may be brief, but promises notable drama in a conflict over the lines separating church and state. Prominent conservative religious and political organizations have rushed to St. Isidore’s defense with the hope of creating a test case that changes the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, meanwhile, is backing Drummond.

— “This case is not about the exclusion of a religious enterprise from government aid,” the alliance argued earlier this year in a legal filing to Oklahoma’s high court. “It is about the government’s creation of a new religious enterprise.”

— St. Isidore’s supporters point to three Supreme Court cases that expanded faith-based institutions’ access to public funds — Carson v. Makin in 2022, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, and Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer in 2017 — to argue the state cannot block churches from using taxpayer dollars to create public schools that teach religion like private schools.

— “Under the Attorney General's interpretation of the law, almost anyone off the street can apply to start a charter school,” the conservative Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs added in its own court brief this year. “But the Catholic Church, which has an impressive and enduring track record of academic success, would be prohibited.”

— Despite all this controversy and attention, don’t expect to see Oklahoma’s school superintendent participating this week. The high court has rebuffed efforts from the office of Superintendent Ryan Walters to intervene in the case and speak during Tuesday’s arguments, with support from both Drummond and St. Isidore’s supporters.

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Higher Education

ANOTHER FAFSA GLITCH — The Education Department and Internal Revenue Service are investigating tax data problems affecting a batch of critical student aid records; a new glitch that could compound criticism of the government’s rocky debut of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid.

— Inaccurate or inconsistent tax data has occasionally been sent to schools on so-called Institutional Student Information Records, the department’s student aid office said in a pair of bulletins on Friday and Saturday. The problems, according to the department, have affected fewer than 20 percent of financial aid applications.

— The agency said it would provide detailed information “about the identification of affected students and remediation plans for these issues” sometime today.

— “We recognize how important it is for schools and families to have the information they need to package and receive aid offers,” the student aid office said. “Accordingly, we will continue our joint efforts with IRS to resolve these issues and implement updates to resolve data inaccuracies as expeditiously as possible.”

— The Education Department has so far processed approximately 6.5 million FAFSA forms, an agency spokesperson said.

— Higher education leaders have already warned they may need weeks of extra time to process data from those student records before they can create financial aid packages for applicants. Schools usually have months to do this, but this year’s chaotic college admissions season has been anything but normal.

— Amid the turmoil, the government will delay a key deadline for separate gainful employment and financial value transparency regulations that promise significant consequences for institutions whose graduates struggle to earn a living.

— Colleges and universities will now have until Oct. 1 to provide data required by the regulations, the agency announced Friday, following pressure from lawmakers and advocacy groups who sought to ease the burden of a signature Biden administration initiative.

In Congress

FINE PRINT — Lawmakers may have averted another budget crisis — for now — after clearing a final fiscal 2024 funding package less than two weeks ago. But there’s plenty of school-related policy directives you might have missed in the funding bill’s accompanying explanatory statement for the Education Department. Here’s a sample:

— Chronic absenteeism: Lawmakers want the Education Department to “improve the quality and rigor” of department monitoring into states’ implementation of school improvement requirements under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Lawmakers directed the department to submit a plan and brief them on how that monitoring will assess states’ “effectiveness in using chronic absenteeism as an indicator in identifying schools in need of support and improvement”.

— Title I: Lawmakers also asked the department to conduct performance reviews of five state educational agencies this year to assess their compliance with Title I-A of the ESEA, and directed the Government Accountability Office to take on additional reviews of school improvement activities that use Title I-A funding.

— Mental health: Lawmakers included $216 million for the department’s School Safety National Activities program, and said the department shall use an estimated $74 million of that money on new grant awards under its Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration and School-Based Mental Health Services programs.

— National Postsecondary Student Aid Study: Congress also included language directing the National Center for Education Statistics to preserve the data collection schedule for its comprehensive study of undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in postsecondary education, following complaints about proposed timing revisions. The budget agreement directs NCES to restore the study's traditional data collection schedule to every two years, and include a student interview every four years.

IN THE STATES

A MATTER OF FAITH — Many religious figures and interfaith organizations are opposing state legislative attempts to bring more spiritual chaplains into public schools, The Associated Press reports, as part of a growing conflict with conservatives who want classrooms to serve as a new haven for religious values.

— Lawmakers in more than a dozen states have proposed measures to allow chaplains in schools in an effort proponents say will ease a youth mental health crisis, bolster staff retention and offer spiritual care to students who can’t afford or access religious schools.

— Conservatives also argue religious foundations will act as a “rescue mission” for what they say are public schools’ declining values, but the idea’s opponents call the motivation offensive and are warning of the dangers of introducing a position of authority to children without clear standards or boundaries.

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Syllabus

— Student loan servicer MOHELA tells advocacy group to stop ‘misleading claims’: The Washington Post

— Oklahoma’s education department's attorneys are all gone. That affected a board meeting: The Oklahoman

— Illinois’ ambitious plan for higher ed funding: Inside Higher Ed

— Harvard University applications fall by 5 percent: The Wall Street Journal

— Why school absences have ‘exploded’ almost everywhere: The New York Times

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