Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board is moving forward with a proposal to create the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school.
St. Isidore would be funded like any other charter school in Oklahoma, which are considered public schools. The application from the St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic Charter School to the Board has been sitting on the table since early April. That’s because no matter what the board decided, it’s expected to face legal challenges.
Erika Wright is the founder of the Oklahoma Rural Schools Coalition. She says the decision is a slippery slope.
"Everyday Oklahomans are not clamoring for this. And everyone in this room knows full well that this will not stop with a virtual charter school," said Wright.
The Statewide Virtual Charter School Board is set to dissolve soon, following the governor’s signature Monday on a bill that would create a new Statewide Charter School Board. That board would oversee both virtual and in-person school districts.
Months after a local business owner died at the Cleveland County Detention Center late last year, the state’s Chief Medical Examiner has released a report on the cause of her death.
A report released by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner last Friday says 38-year-old Shannon Hanchett, the owner of Norman’s Cookie Cottage, died of natural causes related to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a common form of genetic heart disease.
The report also includes dehydration and psychosis with auditory and visual hallucinations as contributing conditions.
Hanchett was arrested for allegedly making false 911 calls and obstructing an officer. After the bodycam footage of her arrest went viral, several members of the community expressed their concern about Hanchett’s mental state.
She was scheduled for a mental health assessment on the day she died.
Cleanup is underway after more than 40,000 gallons of mud containing crude oil and drilling waste spilled out of a pit and into a northern Oklahoma creek.
Not all of that is crude oil. The pit holds drilling mud and materials leftover from boring oil wells. A company called Nemaha Environmental Services stores these materials until they can be used or disposed of.
But when the area received heavy rains last week, the mud pit took on water. The resulting slurry either leaked through or spilled over the pit’s wall and into Nine Mile Creek. Matt Skinner with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission says it’s rare for heavy rains to cause a spill of this size.
Skinner says the pit is secure, and the spill has been contained along three miles of the creek. The cleanup crew is using pumps and other equipment to remove the oily mud. They had recovered about 20,000 gallons by Monday afternoon.Skinner says there’s no way of knowing how long it will take to recover the rest.
Clinton residents may not have to wait as long as originally anticipated for their hospital to reopen.
Since the beginning of the year, the city of Clinton has been without a hospital after the company managing it pulled out and canceled state and federal licenses to operate the facility.
Recently, the city hired a new consultant to work on getting the hospital reopened.
The Clinton Daily News reports the consultant is in talks with the state health department to allow the hospital to meet the existing standards of its previously terminated license, rather than the standards for a new hospital.
If OSDH agrees, the facility would only need to meet the codes from the 1970s when the hospital was originally opened. The newspaper reported by meeting the existing requirements, the hospital could avoid $6.2 million in upgrades estimated to take 15-18 months
Owning or leasing an older property can reveal a disturbing history. A new law in Oklahoma that passed this legislative session targets discriminatory language in real estate covenants.
The new law makes language from real estate contracts that are discriminatory “null and void” and would remove the language with a simple request to a county clerk.
These legal agreements were used throughout the early 20th century United States, mostly to keep Black people from moving into certain neighborhoods. They often targeted other minority groups, too.
The racist covenants haven’t been enforced for decades. But they’re often still on the books.
That’s why Oklahoma lawmakers overwhelmingly voted to strip them from legal documents without barriers or delay. Their action comes more than 75 years after two U.S. Supreme Court cases which disallowed the enforcement of all racial covenants.
The new law goes into effect in November.
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