Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond — a Republican — is bucking his own party in a new lawsuit aimed at preventing what would be the first publicly funded religious school in America from opening.

On Friday, Drummond filed the suit in Oklahoma Supreme Court, challenging the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s 3-2 decision in June to grant a contract to open St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School. According to PBS, Drummond warned that the establishment of St. Isidore, which is sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, would lead to the floodgates opening for religious groups of all stripes to make bids for public funding for schools of their own.

“Make no mistake, if the Catholic Church were permitted to have a public virtual charter school, a reckoning will follow in which this state will be faced with the unprecedented quandary of processing requests to directly fund all petitioning sectarian groups,” the lawsuit read.

  • shastaxc@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Religion aside, opening the floodgates in this way just doesn’t make sense. Our public schools are already underfunded. Why would they want to use the same pool of money to fund even more schools?

      • VikingHippie@lemmy.wtf
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        1 year ago

        That’s the top priority and long term goal. Until they can get that, they’ll settle for an undereducated public since ignorance is the best friend of the preacher…

      • aDuckk@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Alberta, Canada, has a separate publicly funded catholic school system. They bus kids to our main government building every year for the big anti-abortion rally.

    • TimLovesTech@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      It is a way to segregate the “worthy” from the rest (or vice versa I guess depending on if your “worthy” or not).

    • TurtleJoe@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Conservatives have been trying to kill public schools since integration was forced on them. Notice that this was a “virtual” school?

    • Lazhward@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Interesting tidbit: in the Netherlands all schools are publicly funded, including religious ones.