{"id":247946,"date":"2026-07-06T07:30:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-06T11:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=247946"},"modified":"2026-07-02T09:51:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:51:06","slug":"preventing-religious-charter-schools-is-simple-let-local-school-boards-govern-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2026\/07\/preventing-religious-charter-schools-is-simple-let-local-school-boards-govern-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Preventing Religious Charter Schools is Simple. Let Local School Boards Govern Them"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the U.S. Supreme Court mulls whether to provide a pathway for religious charter schools, UConn\u2019s Preston C. Green III<\/a> says states need to prepare for the almost inevitable probability they will be required to allow such education.<\/p>\n

\u201cReality is my friend, I like to say, and I think one has to accept the reality of the situation,\u201d says Green, the John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education in UConn\u2019s Neag School of Education<\/a>. \u201cReading the case law, that\u2019s just where the Supreme Court is \u2013 not only would certain types of schools be permitted, but also states could not prevent charters from operating because they are religious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of Green\u2019s recent research has been on ways to classify charter schools as government entities, using things like a 1995 lawsuit involving the National Railroad Passenger Corp. to argue that charter schools are government offshoots<\/a> and therefore any religious encroachment violates the separation of church and state.<\/p>\n

But within the next couple of years, he says he expects the high court to tell states and the communities within them that independently operated charter schools have the right to offer religious education, even if they receive taxpayer dollars to fund their operation.<\/p>\n

Green\u2019s latest policy brief says that if it comes to pass, the counter is simple: Put charter school governance under the local school district.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they\u2019re not controlled by the government, then religious entities will be allowed to participate in them,\u201d he says. \u201cThe reality of the situation is that if you want charter schools to be in the public realm, you\u2019re going to have to take approaches that will enable the court to say that they are governed by the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

The reality of the situation is that if you want charter schools to be in the public realm, you\u2019re going to have to take approaches that will enable the court to say that they are governed by the public. — Preston C. Green III, John and Maria Neag Professor of Urban Education in UConn\u2019s Neag School of Education<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In \u201cAvoiding the Supreme Court\u2019s Religious Charter-School Trap: Governance Change for the New Legal Era,\u201d<\/a> published in May by the National Education Policy Center<\/a> and co-authored with Kevin G. Welner from the University of Colorado Boulder and Carol C. Burris from the Network for Public Education, Green speculates the court will determine that denying a religious charter school is tantamount to discrimination under the First Amendment.<\/p>\n

States like Alaska, Kansas, Maryland, and Virginia already have structured their charter schools to be governed by local school districts, and California, Texas, and Wisconsin have a mix of charters governed independently and by public schools, the study says.<\/p>\n

While explicitly making charters part of the local school system isn\u2019t such a far-fetched idea, getting buy-in could be difficult, especially from parents who may have chosen to send their children to a charter school just to get away from the public option, Green concedes.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy response to this is that many charter and private schools do not have to provide constitutional rights for their students. And I think a lot of people don\u2019t realize what they may be losing when they take their kids out of a public school to participate in a private school,\u201d he says. \u201cThey lose rights. They lose protections.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are rights that provide things like due process and freedom of speech and protection against things like unlawful search and seizure, among many others that cover students, as well as the teachers and staff employed by the school.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not opposing the idea of banning religious groups just because they\u2019re religious,\u201d Green continues. \u201cBut there will be religious groups arguing that because of who they are they don\u2019t have to follow the Constitution. They don\u2019t have to follow good governance. That is why we wrote this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Besides, he notes, charter schools were created by legislation with the intent they would be defined as public schools. Though over time and in some places, they\u2019ve argued they are private entities as the need arises.<\/p>\n

Green and his co-authors suggest in their review that: charters be governed by a democratically elected body, like a local board of education; their budget and staffing plans be subject to approval by that governing body; and all teachers and staff members be employees of that governing body.<\/p>\n

They also recommend that all state and local laws applicable to public schools also apply to charters, including open meetings and public records laws. Further, they say, states need to give independently operated charter schools a deadline to fall under local jurisdiction \u2013 and prevent independent operation henceforth.<\/p>\n

In 2023, Oklahoma approved the country\u2019s first virtual religious charter school, but opposition from the state attorney general drove the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which deadlocked on whether to allow it<\/a>, keeping intact a state court\u2019s ruling against it.<\/p>\n

Green says that when the high court again takes up the question and inevitably gives its approval, it also will open an opportunity for non-Christian religious charters. In Texas, for instance, Islamic private schools petitioned to participate<\/a> in the state\u2019s school voucher program.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not going to be just religious Christian schools. Islamic schools and other religions that people may not be comfortable with will seek to participate. This has the potential to cause a great deal of consternation within the school choice movement, even though admittedly the vast majority will be Christian schools,\u201d Green says.<\/p>\n

He continues, \u201cI certainly applaud those who are fighting to prevent religious charter schools from happening. A lot of my colleagues are doing just that, and they may be able to win out in the end – it would be a good thing if they did. But my work looks at reality, and this is not just about religion. It\u2019s about students\u2019 rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The policy brief received funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting buy-in to do that could be difficult, but UConn\u2019s Preston Green warns that private school students might not have the same constitutional protections as their public school counterparts – and that\u2019s the crux of the issue<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":247954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1715,2460,1855,2235,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2368],"class_list":["post-247946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community-impact","category-faculty","category-neag","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-13 11:34:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247946"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248134,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247946\/revisions\/248134"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/247954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247946"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=247946"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=247946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}