Hall Pass: Your Ticket to Understanding School Board Politics, Edition #153

By

Ballotpedia staff

Welcome to Hall Pass, a newsletter written to keep you plugged into the conversations driving  school board governance, the politics surrounding it, and education policy. 

In today’s edition, you’ll find:

  • On the issues: The debate over Kentucky HB 622  
  • School board filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications
  • The U.S. Supreme Court and K-12 education in 2025, Part 2: Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond
  • Extracurricular: education news and numbers from around the web
  • Candidate Connection survey
  • School board candidates per seat up for election

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On the issues: The debate over Kentucky HB 622

In this section, we curate reporting, analysis, and commentary on the issues school board members deliberate when they set out to offer the best education possible in their district. Missed an issue? Click here to see the previous education debates we’ve covered.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) vetoed a provision in House Bill 622 this month that would have provided up to $5 million annually to help private schools hire school resource officers. Because the legislature had already adjourned, lawmakers could not override the veto, allowing it to stand. Kentucky is one of six states that require a majority vote to override gubernatorial vetoes. 

Should public money fund police officers in private schools?

What are the arguments?

Governor Beshear writes in his veto message that publicly funding officers in private schools is unconstitutional. He said courts ruled similar laws unconstitutional in 2021 and 2022 and voters rejected a constitutional amendment in 2024 that would have allowed private schools to receive public money.

Senate Majority Leader Max Wise (R) writes in a response to the veto that the decision punishes private school families and endangers kids. He said private school parents still pay property taxes that fund public school operations and law enforcement, so their children should be eligible for publicly funded school protection. 

Read on

Veto Message from the Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky Regarding House Bill 622 of the 2025 Regular Session | Gov. Andy Beshear (D), Commonwealth of Kentucky Office of the Governor

“All Kentucky children deserve to be safe in their schools, but the Kentucky Constitution requires public funds be used only for public schools. In multiple rulings, the Supreme Court of Kentucky has upheld the constitutional mandate that only public schools receive public funds, most recently by striking down two bills passed in 2021 and 2022. Last year, voters in every one of Kentucky’s 120 counties rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed their taxpayer dollars to be spent on nonpublic schools. Because it is unconstitutional, I am vetoing this part.”

Senator Max Wise Rips Governor’s Veto of School Safety Provision | Sen. Max Wise (R), Kentucky Senate Republican Majority Caucus

“Governor Beshear’s line-item veto sends an unmistakable and deeply disturbing message to families across the commonwealth: If your child attends a private school, their safety matters less. … The Governor’s decision doesn’t just fly in the face of a bipartisan mission—it politicizes it. With the stroke of a pen, the Governor has chosen to punish Kentucky families for making a decision that was right for them. Mind you, these are parents who pay local taxes for services like public school operations, fire protection, and law enforcement.”

School board update: filing deadlines, election results, and recall certifications

In 2025, Ballotpedia will cover elections for more than 30,000 school board seats. We’re expanding our coverage each year with our eye on covering the country’s more than 80,000 school board seats.  

Upcoming school board elections

  • May 3—Texas
  • May 6—Montana, Ohio
  • May 13—Arkansas and Delaware
  • May 20—New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon

The U.S. Supreme Court and K-12 education in 2025, Part 2: Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond

Last week, in Part 1 of our series on this year’s K-12 education-related U.S. Supreme Court cases (SCOTUS), we previewed Mahmoud v. Taylor. Mahmoud concerns whether the law allows parents at a Maryland school to opt their children out of lessons involving LGBTQ+ themes. SCOTUS heard oral arguments in the case on April 22.

Today, we’re looking at Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. The justices will hear arguments in the case on April 30. 

In previous years, Hall Pass has provided coverage of many K-12 SCOTUS cases, helping readers better understand the justices’ reasoning and the consequences for the country’s more than 13,000 school districts. Recent K-12 education-related SCOTUS cases include:

The case 

SCOTUS agreed to hear Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond on Jan. 24.  The case concerns whether Oklahoma can authorize a religious charter school. 

The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board approved an application for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in 2023, marking the first time a state had authorized a religious charter school. According to the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, St. Isidore’s curriculum was to be self-consciously rooted in Catholic teachings and doctrines. 

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (R) sued the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, writing that he was acting “to protect religious liberty and prevent the type of state-funded religion that Oklahoma’s constitutional framers and the founders of our country sought to prevent.” On June 25, 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled 6-2 that “religious charter schools violate the state’s constitution, which prohibits state funding for the ‘use, benefit or support of a sect or system of religion.’” 

Members of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board appealed the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from the case, offering no explanation as to why. If SCOTUS issues a ruling that’s split evenly at 4-4, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling will stand. 

Background on the case

On Dec. 1, 2022, Oklahoma’s then-Attorney General John O’Connor (R) released an advisory opinion saying that, in light of recent SCOTUS decisions, a state law prohibiting religiously affiliated charter schools likely violates the First Amendment. The state law reads: “A charter school shall be nonsectarian in its programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations. A sponsor may not authorize a charter school or program that is affiliated with a nonpublic sectarian school or religious institution.” 

O’Connor based his advisory opinion on three SCOTUS rulings—Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer (2016), Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), and Carson v. Makin (2022). In each of those cases, SCOTUS ruled that states could not restrict private religious organizations from receiving generally available taxpayer funds. 

Following O’Connor’s advisory opinion, the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City announced it intended to submit an application for St. Isidore, a virtual school that would serve up to 500 students across the state. 

Drummond, who defeated O’Connor in the 2022 Republican primary 51-49% and went on to win in the general election, rescinded O’Connor’s opinion, saying it, “misuses the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion.” Drummond said Trinity, Espinoza, and Carson all involved private schools, not charter schools.

Drummond sued the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board after it approved St. Isidore’s application, opening a rift with Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), who had backed O’Connor in the primary. Stitt said, “AG Drummond seems to lack any firm grasp on the constitutional principle of religious freedom and masks his disdain for the Catholics’ pursuit by obsessing over non-existent schools that don’t neatly align with his religious preference.” 

Drummond announced earlier this year that he was running for Oklahoma governor in 2026.

The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board’s decision also exposed a divide among charter school advocates. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools opposed the decision to approve St. Isidore of Seville, arguing charter schools are and ought to remain nonsectarian public schools. Classical Charter Schools of America said that Oklahoma’s approval of St. Isidore’s application was correct because the fundamental purpose of charter schools is to provide flexible alternatives to traditional public education. 

Background on charter schools

Since the early 1990s, 47 states have passed laws authorizing charter schools. Minnesota was the first to do so in 1991, with the first schools opening in 1992. North Dakota became the 47th state to authorize charter schools on April 21, 2025. 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, roughly 7.6% of all public school students attended charter schools in the 2022-23 school year. 

In all 47 states, charter schools must be secular schools.

What’s at stake

At the heart of Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond is whether charter schools are state actors or private entities. If classified as state actors, then religious charter schools would likely violate the Establishment Clause’s prohibition against government endorsement of religion. Drummond, in his brief to SCOTUS, wrote, “At the outset, the State’s official approval of one particular Catholic curriculum presents an obvious Establishment Clause issue in that the State has elevated the doctrinal beliefs of one rite of Catholicism over all others.” However, if charter schools are considered private actors that contract with the state to provide public education services, then recent SCOTUS precedent suggests that excluding religious organizations from charter school eligibility based only on their religious character would violate the Free Exercise Clause’s protection against religious discrimination. The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, in its brief, argues that “since St. Isidore is not a state actor, the Free Exercise Clause forbids Oklahoma from excluding it from the otherwise available public benefit of running a state-funded charter school based on its religious character.”

In a series of rulings since 2016, SCOTUS has generally established that states cannot exclude religious organizations from funding or programs that are generally available to the public. In Carson v. Makin (2022), for example, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 that Maine violated the Constitution when it required that only secular private schools could participate in a tuition assistance program providing taxpayer funding to students in rural districts without public high schools.

Drummond argued that under Oklahoma law, charter schools are public schools for some of the following reasons: charter schools are tuition-free; they must accept all students; and they must receive approval from the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board for any curriculum changes. According to Drummond, those requirements set charter schools apart from their strictly private counterparts. The Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board, for its part, disputed Drummond’s claim that the law requires the state to review curriculum changes, writing, “The whole point of charter schools is to allow methodological innovation.” The board, citing previous SCOTUS rulings, argued that an entity does not become a state actor merely because the state labels it as such. 

Thomas B. Fordham Institute President Michael J. Petrilli writes, “The impact that such a ruling could have on America’s education landscape is massive. Religious charter schools would become legal overnight in every one of the forty-six states with charter school laws on the books.” Petrilli goes on to speculate that while red states would likely celebrate the ruling, blue states might react by limiting new charter schools.

Here’s how legal experts from across the political spectrum are thinking about the implications of Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond:

  • Notre Dame Law School professor Nicole Stelle Garnett writes, “But charter schools are not government schools. Charter laws enlist private organizations to run schools, and give them substantial operational autonomy in order to foster educational pluralism. And, charter schools, like private schools participating in parental choice programs, are schools of choice. The only students who will be educated by St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School are students whose families choose the school for them.”
  • The American Civil Liberties Union submitted an amicus brief urging SCOTUS to uphold the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling: “Oklahoma taxpayers, including our plaintiffs, should not be forced to fund a religious public school that plans to discriminate against students and staff and indoctrinate students into one religion. Converting public schools into Sunday schools would be a dangerous sea change for our democracy.” 

Learn more about this case here. 

Extracurricular: education news from around the web

This section contains links to recent education-related articles from around the internet. If you know of a story we should be reading, reply to this email to share it with us! 

Take our Candidate Connection survey to reach voters in your district

Today, we’re looking at survey responses from two candidates running in the May 6 primary for three at-large seats on the Columbus City Schools Board of Education in Ohio.

Jermaine Kennedy and Mounir Lynch are two of the 10 candidates running in the race, and the only ones so far who’ve completed the survey. 

All seven members on the Columbus City Schools Board of Education are elected at-large. Columbus City Schools is the largest district in Ohio, with roughly 49,000 students. 

Here’s how Kennedy answered the question, “What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?”

“✅ Fair school funding that ensures students in all neighborhoods have access to high-quality education and resources.

✅ Career pathways and workforce development, especially for students who have been historically underserved or disconnected.

✅ Mental health and student well-being, because we can’t separate learning from emotional safety and support.

✅ Inclusive education policies, including DEI and protections for LGBTQ+ youth, so every student feels seen, safe, and valued.

✅ Community partnerships, because schools should be the heartbeat of their neighborhoods—not just learning spaces, but places of opportunity, healing, and hope.”

Click here to read the rest of Kennedy’s responses. 

Here’s how Lynch answered the question, “What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?”

“Education justice, public health, reproductive rights, housing, racial justice, sexual and gender equity.”

Click here to read the rest of Lynch’s responses. 

Everyone deserves to know their candidates. However, we know it can be hard for voters to find information about their candidates, especially for local offices such as school boards. That’s why we created Candidate Connection — a survey designed to help candidates tell voters about their campaigns, their issues, and so much more. 

In the 2024 election cycle, 6,539 candidates completed the survey, including more than 500 school board candidates. 
If you’re a school board candidate or incumbent, click here to take the survey.