Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond is asking a court to order the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board to fully explain its decision to reject an application for the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School. He filed the motion in Oklahoma County District Court.
Drummond said the board cited only religion as the reason for rejecting the application during its meeting this week, even though members had previously identified other significant problems with the proposal.
“This Board is playing politics with the taxpayers’ money,” Drummond said. “The revised Ben Gamla application had multiple serious flaws, which this Board itself identified just weeks earlier. But instead of doing its job and listing every valid reason for rejection, the Board deliberately suppressed those findings to manufacture a cleaner path to federal court. I will not allow this Board to rig the record at taxpayers’ expense.”
According to Drummond’s office, the board initially rejected the application in February and listed several deficiencies. When a revised application was submitted, those issues had not been fully addressed.
During the board’s March 9 meeting, a representative from the Attorney General’s office pointed to a large discrepancy in projected enrollment numbers as one reason to deny the application. Officials also noted that both the Oklahoma City and Tulsa Jewish communities had expressed opposition to the proposal, raising concerns about whether the school could meet its enrollment projections.
Drummond alleges board chairman Brian Shellem blocked a motion that would have rejected the application based on all identified deficiencies and instead directed members to cite only religion as the reason for denial.
“The Board has announced plans to hire outside legal counsel to defend a threatened federal lawsuit, and it manipulated the record to make that lawsuit easier to lose, not win,” Drummond said. “A state agency that deliberately hobbles its own legal position is not doing its job. It is betraying Oklahoma taxpayers.”
Drummond said his petition to the court is intended to require the board to issue a complete and accurate rejection letter that reflects all of the reasons the application was denied.
