The board that cast a 3-2 vote to authorize a Catholic virtual charter school in Oklahoma may have been invalid because a new appointee was not supposed to be seated until November 1 and was not eligible to cast a vote.
Monday’s national headline-making vote to give state sanctioning and Oklahoma taxpayer dollars to a Catholic school may have been invalid.
It turns out the state Attorney General’s Office believes that Oklahoma City businessman Brian Bobek is ineligible to serve on the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board until November.
But an email to that effect was not received by the board’s chairman and executive director until after Bobek cast the deciding vote Monday to approve state sponsorship for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School.
Long-serving member Barry Beauchamp, a retired school superintendent from Lawton who had been allowed to continue serving after his term expired some months ago, was replaced abruptly on Friday by Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall.
Less than half an hour before Monday’s special board meeting began at noon, Deputy Attorney General Niki Batt sent an email to board Chairman Robert Franklin and Executive Director Rebecca Wilkinson saying that because Beauchamp had not vacated his seat, the law that created the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board doesn’t allow Bobek to take over the seat until November.
Franklin said that if Bobek was ineligible, his vote was invalid.
He is also concerned that a lengthy, written statement that Bobek read during Monday’s meeting, which included numerous legal citations, could have influenced the votes of other board members, including Scott Strawn, who was recently appointed to the board by Gov. Kevin Stitt.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The courts are going to continue being busy dealing with all the fascist legislation being turned out by MAGA-RINO fascists.
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Well, this spoils their hope of getting the thing appealed to the current Trumpanzee Extreme Court of the United States so that that court can bash down the wall preventing public funding of private religious schools.
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When did the GOP ever let the rule of law get in their way? They tend to do what they want to do regardless of consequences. They will have to wait until fall for virtual God unless they can figure out a way to circumvent the law. The GOP excels at subterfuge.
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Nomination for comment of the day. That first sentence is actually the new cult motto. De facto, that is.
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I told you it was going to be interested. Oklahoma Governor Stitt has been admonished by an Oklahoma County Grand Jury for stacking the state Pardon and Parole Board with his appointees and then instructing them how to vote. It’s his M. O.
He did not appoint the new board member, but it is his way of getting things done.
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“Interesting”‘
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Tennessee passed a voucher bill a couple of years ago with questionable parliamentary procedures, leading to an FBI investigation. How many times can they do this?
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Commenters Jacqui, Lloyd and Catherine should take a victory lap. Does the most recent e-mail from NPE omit that the Okla. charter school is Catholic, preferring to pillory protestant “Christian nationalist schools”? The Catholic Church’s politicking for school choice once again gets cover?
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