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Laura Schuler, senior director for Catholic Education at Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, and Michael Scaperlanda, chancellor for the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, present a proposal for the nation’s first publicly funded Catholic charter school earlier this year at a meeting of the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board at the Oklahoma History Center. The two sides squaring off over public funding for a Catholic charter school in Oklahoma have lawyered up. Already, 27 attorneys from six states and Washington, D.C., have signed on for the battle , which is in Oklahoma County now but may ultimately head to the U.S. Supreme Court. Several of the attorneys represent national groups that have been fighting in courts for decades over church-state issues. The Oklahoma case offers them a chance to test the question of whether a publicly funded Christian school would be an arm of the state — a “state actor,” in the legal parlance. The answer could have impacts well beyond Oklahoma’s borders. The case also thrusts St. Isidore, the virtual charter school envisioned by the Archdioceses of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, into the overlapping national debates about politics, culture and education. “Charter schools are public schools and they must […]