On October 20th, Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed suit in the Oklahoma State Supreme Court against “the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board for approving what would be the nation’s first religious charter school funded by public tax dollars.” Earlier this year, the board approved St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, an all-virtual charter school, to be operated by a Catholic organization.
Within a statement released by the AG’s office, Drummond is quoted as saying, “The board members who approved this contract have violated the religious liberty of every Oklahoman by forcing us to fund the teachings of a specific religious sect with our tax dollars.” Both case law and decades of public funding prove Drummond’s assertions in this case to be inaccurate.
While the board’s approval of St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic School represents the first time a charter school operated by a religious institution has been funded in Oklahoma, AG Drummond is incorrect in claiming public tax dollars have never been allocated to a specific religious sect to serve public school students. Federal public education funds have been available to churches and faith-based institutions for decades in all 50 states.
Title IV-B: Federal Education Grants to Schools, Groups and Religious Organizations to Serve Failing Public Schools
For 28 years, students from high-poverty, low-performing, public schools have been provided educational services under sizable Title IV-Part B grants, as currently legislated within the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). Commonly referred to as 21st Century Community Learning Centers, the federal program’s intent is to help “students meet state and local student standards in core academic subjects, such as reading and math” by providing afterschool academic supports.
Title IV, Part B mission statement from OSDE website.
All states receive an annual Title IV-B allocation from the federal government based upon each state’s Title I formula, and then each conducts a statewide grant competition to gift the money, primarily to school districts. However, the funds are available to other groups, including faith-based organizations, willing to assist students within specific, failing public schools.
“Consistent with this definition of eligible entities, faith-based organizations are eligible to participate in the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program.”
In 2020-21, a total of 116 Title IV-B afterschool programs were operated by faith-based organizations within public schools across the nation.
In accordance with the Constitution, the Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) is similarly inclusive of faith-based organizations during its Title IV-B grant competition:
“FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS: The Oklahoma State Department of Education (OSDE) will not discriminate against grant applicants with regard to religion.A Faith-Based Organization (FBO) may apply for funding.”
In Oklahoma, this funding has gone to church-affiliated organizations such as TOUCH Tulsa, the non-profit arm of New Beginnings Church. The OSDE also previously funded The Tulsa Dream Center, an arm of Victory Christian Center (now Victory Church) in providing afterschool programs to children at four Tulsa Public Schools locations.
In neighboring Arkansas, Ministry of Intercession was just funded for its Bridge 2 Success program to help raise testing scores at two public schools. In Texas, St. Mary’s Academy Charter School was just awarded $680,000 for Title IV-B services through the Texas Department of Education. Such examples of faith-based institutions utilizing federal tax dollars within public education are evident across the country.
Alliance Defending Freedom Representing Statewide Virtual Charter School Board: Drummond May Have Constitutional Protections Backward and Upside-Down
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has signed on to represent the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board within Drummond’s suit. According to ADF, “One implication of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment is that the government cannot treat religious people worse than it treats everyone else.”In such treatment, government cannot withhold funding opportunities based upon religion or lack thereof. That would be unconstitutional.
Unlike Drummond’s argument, the ADF is standing on recent SCOTUS case law, including a case the ADF itself defended before the nation’s highest court in 2017:
In the landmark Supreme Court decision in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer—won by Alliance Defending Freedom in 2017—the Court ruled that such discrimination is “odious to our Constitution. In Oklahoma, the Charter Schools Act allows private entities like a “private college or university, private person, or private organization” to contract with a public sponsor and operate charter schools in the state.
The ADF further refutes claims that the board is moving to establish a state religion, and stresses St. Isidore’s proposed policies which specifically state the school will welcome all students, including those of “different faiths or no faith.”
From St. Isidore’s website:
As a statewide school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School will admit any and all students who reside in the state, provided there is capacity to serve that student’s grade level per the annual enrollment goals for each year. All students are welcome, those of different faiths or no faith.
Drummond’s recent comments on the case suggest he may be pointing in the wrong direction on this issue:
“I will continue fighting to protect the Constitution and preserve religious liberty, just as my oath requires,” AG Gentner Drummond (October 20, 2023).
Somehow, Drummond has positioned his crusade to block a Christian group from giving all Oklahoma parents a needed educational option as an effort to “preserve religious liberty.” Is this a failure in logic, or something else? Similarly, Drummond publicly agreed not to enforce Oklahoma’s law protecting children from invasive gender transition surgeries until Federal District Judge John Heil, on October 5th, ruled the law is constitutional and can go into effect immediately. What’s influencing decisions in the new AG’s office?
Is Drummond Seeking to Discriminate Against Religion or Is This Political?
Oddly, AG Drummond continues to promise “to litigate this issue (St. Isidore Charter) to the United States Supreme Court if that’s what is required to protect our Constitutional rights”, despite SCOTUS having already refused to hear the case in June, deeming it a state issue. Given longstanding evidence of Title IV-B funds going to religious groups, it appears Drummond may have to add the Biden administration and The US Department of Education to his current suit. Why would a supposedly conservative, Republican AG take such a stance?
Protecting Failing Public Ed From Virtual Charters
Virtual schooling is the greatest threat to funding for existing and frequently failing public schools. As parents are offered an online option, students and their attached funding flow out of places like Tulsa and Oklahoma City Public Schools. Despite reported concerns over financial issues surrounding EPIC Charter Schools as early as 2013, the microscope truly came to hover over the virtual provider only after EPIC became the largest district in the state in mid-2020, with over 40,000 students enrolled.
Drummond beat the EPIC Charter drum throughout his 2022 campaign, vowing to prosecute its founders for embezzlement and other financial improprieties while ignoring the failures of the OSDE, then under Joy Hofmeister, that allowed funds to improperly flow to the virtual charter for years, according to an investigative audit by State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd.
This publication covered the overlap in campaign management and political consultants among the Drummond and Hofmeister campaigns in a previous article. As both a Republican and a Democrat, Hofmeister enjoyed the overwhelming support of the education unions and public education establishment fighting the shift in funding from large districts to virtual options like EPIC Charter and St. Isidore.
Despite an ongoing investigation into EPIC Charter through the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s office, on his first day in office, Drummond took the case against EPIC into the AG’s office for prosecution. Earlier this month, Drummond added additional charges to EPIC’s founders, bringing the total to 15 counts.
Is the common money and political punditry behind Oklahoma’s elected officials working to ensure virtual charters do not dip too heavily into the public education coffer? It is unknown if the AG’s office would be fighting against St. Isadore’s if it had proposed a more limited, brick-and-mortar charter school rather than a statewide virtual academy.
With AG’s Chief of Staff, Are Politics Now the Priority in Drummond’s Office?
Trebor Worthen, a political consultant with direct ties to a massive chunk of the dark money that campaigned against incumbent Governor Kevin Stitt in 2022, is now AG Drummond’s Chief of Staff. Given Worthen is not an attorney, his hiring within the AG’s office is unusual. It appears a political fox is now running arguably the most important governmental henhouse in the state, this time on a taxpayer funded salary.
Trebor Worthen, former partner AH Strategies, now Chief of Staff for AG Drummond.
In addition, Worthen’s wife Jenna, of James Martin Company, has been paid $283,398 for fundraising and consulting on Drummond’s 2022 campaign.
From AG Drummond 2022 campaign Q3 filing with OEC.
Drummond’s 3rd quarter 2023 filings with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission show the James Martin Company continues to be paid well after the November 2022 election, suggesting Jenna Worthen is already involved in Drummond’s next political move.
Jenna Worthen, James Martin Company LLC.
Trebor Worthen operated the foreign, 504 (c)(4), social welfare organization Sooner State Leadership Fund, a self-reported $10 million fund that exclusively ran attack ads against Stitt. There was no social welfare work attached to Worthen’s dark money group, despite law requiring more than half of funding go for those purposes.
This publication previously reported in detail about Worthen and his dark money entity:
Worthen was also closely involved in Joy Hofmeister’s (former State Superintendent of Public Instruction) 2014-2017 dark money scandal which resulted in the indictment of Hofmeister and four others, including Worthen’s then partner Fount Holland. At the time, Hofmeister was a Republican, but would later flip parties to run against incumbent Governor Kevin Stitt in 2022.
With a political consultant and dark money liaison running the AG’s office, the application of law in Oklahoma may soon resemble that of Biden’s DOJ with politics outweighing justice. For St. Isidore’s virtual charter, it appears the Constitution and its protections against religious discrimination are in its favor.
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