As the new Statewide Charter School Board prepares for its first — and potentially consequential — meeting on Monday, it has almost a full slate of members.
Three appointments made during the final week of June — one by state House Speaker Charles McCall, two by Oklahoma Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat — increased the membership on what’s supposed to be a nine-person board to eight.
The board will succeed the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, which oversaw only online charter schools in Oklahoma. The Legislature created the new board last year “to support education choice through the authorization of charter schools and virtual charter schools and the development and implementation of educational online learning courses and tools,” according to its website.
The new board officially began operation on July 1, the day after the old board dissolved. The new board will oversee all state-sponsored charter schools, seven virtual and four brick-and-mortar.
It also will inherit a legal quandary from the old board.
Last October, the Statewide Virtual School Charter Board voted 3-2 to approve the creation of an eighth virtual charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would have been the nation’s first religious virtual charter school. However, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond quickly sued , saying such an agreement was unconstitutional. After hearing oral arguments in the case, the state Supreme Court on June 25 ordered the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to rescind its contract with St. Isidore.
But in a special meeting held on June 28, the old board — down to only three of its usual five members at that point and thus needing a unanimous vote to pass a motion — failed to do so, voting 2-0 with an abstention to rescind the contract. Thus, that issue now falls to the new board. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which operates St. Isidore, has said it plans to seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court.
An item on the agenda for the new board’s first meeting is an executive session to discuss the litigation related to St. Isidore, and then, in open session, “Discussion and possible action regarding the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s June 25, 2024, ruling.”
Who are the members of the new Statewide Charter School Board?
Only one voting member of the old board is transitioning to the new board — Brian Shellem, of Edmond. He is one of three appointees of Gov. Kevin Stitt, along with two other Edmond women, Angie Thomas and Kathleen White. State Auditor and Inspector Cindy Byrd has appointed Kitty Campbell as her representative. State schools Superintendent Ryan Walters appointed himself.
Treat and McCall each were allotted two appointees. Treat’s selections were Becky Gooch, of Oklahoma City, the committee staff director and policy director for Treat’s Senate pro tempore office, and Damon Gardenhire, of Norman, who has spent much of the past 12 years as a senior program officer for the Walton Family Foundation and the Walton Personal Philanthropy Group.
Gardenhire also served as the communication and policy director for the Oklahoma State Department of Education in 2011 and 2012 under then-Superintendent Janet Barresi , while Gooch was a member of the Putnam City Schools Board of Education from 2008 to 2020.
McCall appointed Jared Buswell, of Tulsa, who unsuccessfully ran for a seat on the Tulsa Public Schools board earlier this year and describes himself as an “education activist” on his LinkedIn page. Among those who contributed to Buswell’s campaign were Barresi, former Gov. Frank Keating and former state Attorney General John O’Connor.
McCall has another appointment to the board remaining.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: A consequential decision looms for the first meeting of the Statewide Charter School Board
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