In an unexpected turn of events, the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board rejected the application of a virtual Jewish charter school on Monday, despite a federal judge removing the main legal barrier for approval last month.

The National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, a Florida-based charter school network that until now has operated schools focused on Israel and Hebrew but were not explicitly Jewish, had aimed to open the first publicly funded religious charter school in Oklahoma, with the expectation that its case would reach the Supreme Court and establish a legal precedent for direct state funding of religious schools.

The local Oklahoma Jewish community largely opposed Ben Gamla’s efforts, which at least one of the state charter school board members credited with leading him to vote against the approval on Monday.

Ben Gamla’s Supreme Court trajectory was somewhat derailed as a federal judge ruled last month that Oklahoma could not deny the Ben Gamla school’s request for funding only because it was a religious school. This sent the matter back to Oklahoma’s Statewide Charter School Board, which had previously voted on the school’s application and voted against it on the grounds that it could not legally approve it. With this obstacle removed by the federal judge’s ruling, the charter school was widely expected to be approved. 

On Monday, however, the request, which required at least five votes in favor from the nine-person board, received only four votes, with three voting against. One board member was absent from Monday’s meeting, and one seat on the board is unfilled, according to the local NPR station.

It is not immediately clear how Ben Gamla, which was launched by former Democratic Rep. Peter Deutch, will proceed. After the vote, Ben Gamla board member Brett Farley told local reporters that it amounted to a “setback, but it’s not the end.”

Though the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board members were not required to explain their votes, one of those who voted against approval, William Pearson, told The Oklahoma Voice that he did so because of the local Jewish community’s opposition. 

“I think it all goes back, to me, with the Jewish community in Oklahoma that actually had submitted letters to the board recommending that we not approve it,” Pearson said. 

Pearson contrasted that with a similar case on the matter, an effort to create a Catholic charter school known as St. Isidore, which did have significant support from the local community. 

Speaking to eJewishPhilanthropy earlier this year, when Ben Gamla first applied for state recognition, Joe Roberts, executive director of the Tulsa Jewish Federation, said that local Jewish leaders saw the virtual charter school as unnecessary due to limited interest in another Jewish day school in Oklahoma when the state’s existing offerings already have ample room for additional students. That lack of interest and need, Roberts said, put the Jewish community in the middle of a divisive fight over the separation of religion and state with no clear benefit and without Ben Gamla first reaching out to discuss and coordinate. Some local leaders also opposed the effort specifically because it undermined that separation, which they see as critical to preserving Jewish safety.

“I have concerns about our community being affected by this. It is going to become a national issue, and this is politicizing a Jewish community that had no input in the process and has no say in the outcome if we’re not consulted. That’s a concern to me,” Roberts said at the time. “Why are they doing it in our name?”

In the days before the vote, correspondence emerged showing that Ben Gamla had also significantly overestimated its expected enrollment. When the school first applied, it said that it projected “an enrollment of 335 to 495 students.” But in an email to Rabbi Dan Kaiman, a Tulsa-based rabbi, asking him to become the principal of the school, Deutch said that in the first year, the school expected to have far, far less. “Our aspirational enrollment goal for the first year is intentionally modest: 10 students,” he wrote. The email, which Kaiman shared with the attorneys opposing Ben Gamla, also noted that the school would only be a high school, despite its charter school application stating that it planned to be a K-12 school. 

(Kaiman, who rejected the offer, was also an odd choice as a candidate, having openly opposed Ben Gamla’s effort as it breaks down the separation between religion and state, even becoming an official “intervenor” in the case against it.) 

“Mr. Deutsch’s email shows what we’ve long argued: Mr. Deutsch, who’s from Florida, and his school are completely disconnected from the Oklahoma Jewish community,” Kaiman said in a statement. “It also shows how little our community wants this. Perhaps most importantly, it shows that this school is nothing but a Trojan horse for creating religious public schools.”