Charters’ public funding comes with necessary strings attached

While I have long appreciated Jeff Jacoby’s thoughtful and principled conservatism in the pages of the Globe, I’m afraid I have to call out the error in his constitutional analysis of the Oklahoma board of education’s decision to approve a religious charter school. Jacoby argues that faith-based schools cannot be barred from receiving public funding for providing a public service (such as K-12 education) if other nonsectarian private groups can receive such funding. Equally important, Jacoby asserts that under the First Amendment a private school receiving public funds cannot be precluded from providing religious instruction. In both cases, Jacoby misinterprets recent rulings from the Supreme Court, especially in how they apply — or more accurately, don’t — to charter schools.

The Supreme Court has indeed established that vouchers granted to individuals may be used by those individuals to defray tuition costs at private schools, including religious ones. But this is not how charters are funded; they receive public dollars directly as part of state or local government budgets. In addition, while the court has held that religious institutions need to be treated fairly relative to nonsectarian organizations when it comes to eligibility for direct government funding to further a public purpose, such funding comes with necessary strings, including compliance with limitations on activities that advance religion. Most important, Jacoby is wrong when he states that charter schools are “not publicly operated” and therefore should be treated like private schools. While it’s true that charters are not run by local school committees, their citizen boards are authorized by public bodies, such as state boards of education, to operate under publicly established laws and regulations. In other words, charter schools are public schools.

JAMES A. PEYSER Milton

The writer was Massachusetts secretary of education from 2015 to 2022.