The John Rex Polytechnic High School will be a public charter school scheduled to open in the fall of 2027. It will serve ninth grade students its first year and add a grade each year after. It will be located about a block west of the Oklahoma City National Memorial.
John Rex Charter School already operates an elementary, middle and junior high school.
Students will choose from six concentration areas, including engineering, entrepreneurship and biomedical studies.
The school is financially supported by the nonprofit Inasmuch Foundation, according to its website.
The lottery for the inaugural class opens online Nov. 11.
According to public school quality organization Fuel OKC, enrollment at Oklahoma City Public Schools fell nearly 20% from 2014 to 2024, the most recent year with available data.
Charter schools sponsored by OKCPS grew 103% over the same period. Together, public school enrollment inside the district’s boundaries has decreased 5.4% in that time.
John Rex is sponsored by OKCPS. The plans for its expansion were revealed at a district board meeting last year.
Fueled by declining enrollment, the district also launched the Pathway to Greatness plan in 2019, which consolidated 15 school sites.
Asked for a response to the John Rex announcement given the district’s current enrollment numbers, a OKCPS spokesperson told StateImpact they could not prepare a statement before the publication deadline. The spokesperson did not respond when asked how long was needed for the district to prepare a statement.
Mayor David Holt congratulated John Rex on social media Thursday.
More than a third of Oklahoma parents of school-aged children in 2025 said they sent their children to a different school than the one they were assigned by district boundaries, according to a survey of about 200 respondents by education advocacy nonprofit 50Can. That includes private schools, charter schools and homeschooling.
A 2025 report from the Statewide Charter School Board found that charter schools serve about 8% of Oklahoma public school students, up from 7.4% in 2024. Brick-and-mortar charters serve 83% economically disadvantaged students, compared to 62% in traditional public schools. Nearly 6 in 10 Oklahoma charter school students identify as Hispanic.
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