During several hours of public testimony before the State Board of Education, multiple speakers noted negative or inaccurate representations of Judaism and a lack of attention to contemporary Jewish life or Americans. 

Sharyn Vane, one of the speakers who addressed the board, called the new program, branded as Bluebonnet Learning, “wildly problematic in its depictions of Jews and Judaism.” She referred to a second grade lesson on Queen Esther in which Haman, an official of the Persian king, cast lots to decide when to kill the Jews. The lesson includes students playing a game of dice. “This is shocking, offensive and just plain wrong. Do we ask elementary schoolers to pretend to be Hitler?”

Another speaker pointed to how fourth graders are asked to highlight positive aspects of the Crusades.

“We were being murdered en masse,” Emily Bourgeois, public affairs director for Shalom Austin, said about the persecution of Jews during the Middle Ages. “There’s not really a whole lot of benefit to that.” 

The public’s comments, while more critical than favorable, demonstrated the intense pressure on board members to either tone down the emphasis on the Bible, add more references to other world religions or accept the proposed curriculum as is. The Texas Education Agency, which developed it, now has until Oct. 14 to complete any revisions before the board votes in November on a final list of approved materials. Groups opposed to the biblical content have urged the board to reject lessons that they say come close to proselytizing. But conservative organizations, , have encouraged their networks in recent weeks to bombard members with emails calling for approval of the state-developed materials with no changes. 

​​”The Bible is the single most impactful piece of literature. It is the single biggest influence on the formation of Western civilization,” Aaron Harris, a who has been to the materials, said during the hearing. “Any denial of that fact is just silly.”

Some board members seem to have already made up their minds. In her , Audrey Young, a Republican whose district includes Houston, said not including the Bible in the curriculum will “continue to severely limit [students’] opportunity for academic success.”

“Separation of church and state as a legal concept does not mean the two realms never interact,” she wrote. “It only means that one does not control the other.”

Julie Pickren, a conservative Republican board member — who often posts Bible verses on social media — defended the Bluebonnet Learning curriculum throughout the meeting, saying she’s received 12,000 emails in favor of the program, but just a “minuscule” number opposed.  

‘Y’all must have done something right,” she told Colin Dempsey, a director at the agency that has managed the review process.

Others, however, are still probing for information on who influenced the development of the curriculum, which was adapted from Core Knowledge Language Arts, a widely used reading program published by Amplify. At least twice, Board Member Pam Little, also a Republican, asked whether the agency engaged a religious committee to provide input on the lessons. 

The state has posted a list of the members of the But a spokesman for the agency said he was unaware of a separate group of faith leaders who were involved in the process.

One group involved in the development of the materials — and now — is the , a right-leaning organization. Two experts with the foundation, Thomas Lindsay and Courtnie Bagley, worked as “subject matter experts” on the lessons. Lindsay was also on the advisory board. The group’s involvement has spurred some critics to raise questions about whether improving reading scores is the primary objective of the new curriculum.

“Gov. Greg Abbott’s education commissioner is outsourcing the education of a generation of Texas school children to people more interested in pushing political agendas than in educating kids,” Carisa Lopez, deputy director of the Texas Freedom Network, said during a press conference Tuesday. “That should be alarming to all parents regardless of their religious or political beliefs.”

Last month, the watchdog group, which monitors far-right movements, issued on the curriculum, saying the authors present Christian beliefs as “straightforwardly true.” Author David Brockman, a religious studies scholar at Rice University, cited, for example, a third grade lesson on Christianity that states, “In the years that followed, many heard about the resurrection of Jesus.” 

“Students may well gain the impression that the Resurrection was a historical event — a faith claim a public school curriculum has no business conveying,” Brockman wrote.

State officials, meanwhile, have already accepted many of the corrections submitted by the public, according to now posted on the agency’s website. Mark Chancey, a religious studies professor at Southern Methodist University, submitted dozens of corrections. The state revised, for example, a line that said the word “genesis” originated with the first book of the Bible. But they made no changes to the statement: “God gave King Solomon wisdom on all things.” Chancey commented that the wording promotes “a particular religious belief.”

‘A position of authority’

Bluebonnet Learning, which will be optional for districts to use, is just one of 142 programs in reading and math publishers submitted to the board. The fact that Tuesday’s speakers exclusively spoke about Bluebonnet highlights the intense controversy the Bible-infused curriculum has ignited since late May when the agency released it. 

Expecting the polarizing comments, Board Chair Aaron Kinsey asked Austin Kinghorn, a deputy state attorney general, to weigh in on the constitutionality of the curriculum. Kinghorn asserted, as most supporters of the curriculum have, that it’s permissible to teach about religion in public school and that the Bible played a pivotal role in American history. But if lessons amount to proselytizing, he said, they would violate the First Amendment. 

Multiple times, he noted the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in , in which the court upheld a high school coach’s right to pray in public at football games, as the most recent legal test of whether references to religion in school cross the line. Coercion, he said “doesn’t exist nearly as often” as some perceive.

But other legal experts said the Kennedy decision doesn’t necessarily answer the questions raised by the Texas curriculum, or similar actions in other GOP-led states. In Oklahoma, state Superintendent Ryan Walters has that teachers use the Bible in instruction, and in Louisiana, a new law requires the 10 Commandments posted in all classrooms. 

“The entire premise of the Kennedy ruling is that the coach was not acting from a position of authority, but was acting solely in his private capacity and that those who joined him in his private prayer did so voluntarily,“ said Derek Black, a constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina. Schools can “expose students to portions of the Bible as an example of literature or religious text, as long as it is in the context of exposure to lots of other historical literature. But they cannot teach the Bible as religion or truths that someone should or should not follow.”

‘World religions’

High-level debates over what children learn are nothing new in Texas. 

About a decade ago, the state of an online curriculum system, called CSCOPE, after conservatives complained it was anti-American. The majority of districts in the state used the materials, but some critics didn’t like that lessons introduced students to other world religions, like Islam. 

A similar controversy derailed plans in 2022 to adopt a new . Republican lawmakers argued the material would violate the state’s law against teaching “critical race theory” because it included lessons on race and LGBTQ issues, among other topics.

For reading, the state spent $19 million in 2020 to purchase the Amplify program. At the time, the state rejected two of the units Amplify submitted that covered the world’s major religions. As ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ first reported, the state asked Amplify to add some stories from the Bible, like the one on Queen Esther. The company wrote a draft, but it ultimately bowed out and didn’t bid on the next phase of the project

In 2022, the state contracted with Boston-based Public Consulting Group to further revise the Amplify lessons. Notes from an April 2022 “project kick-off meeting,” which the Texas Education Agency shared with ĂŰĚŇÓ°ĘÓ, show officials planned to “bring world religions back in.” Another notation said a second grade unit on , which focuses on mythology, would be a “form of teaching other religion.”

The proposed materials, however, include sparse mentions of Islam and Hinduism while predominantly featuring stories and passages from the Bible. And religions like Sikhism aren’t mentioned at all.

That lack of representation “takes away the opportunity for students to develop a genuine understanding of practices and perspectives outside their own,” Upneet Kaur, senior education manager for , told the board. “Sikh students know the devastating impact of this all too well.”

But Carole Haynes, one of the nearly 250 reviewers the state hired to examine the proposed materials, wrote in a that countries where other religions are dominant are unlikely to “allow Christianity to be included in their school curriculum.”

“It’s so important that we have children read these biblical stories,” wrote Haynes, who is a curriculum consultant. She mentioned a kindergarten lesson on the that highlights Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. “It wasn’t politicization. It wasn’t teaching them Christianity. It was teaching them moral character. That’s where our kids are deficient.” 

Many also can’t read on grade level. Roughly half of Texas’s elementary school students are proficient, and this year’s show declines in the percentages of third and fifth graders meeting expectations. Fourth graders made a 3 percentage point gain. 

Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath has said Bluebonnet Learning will improve students’ vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. His presentations for lawmakers point to reading gains in districts that have piloted some earlier versions of the lessons. 

But Board Member Tom Maynard, a Republican, said overall, results from those districts have been “spotty.”

While the public’s comments during Tuesday’s hearing overwhelmingly focused on the religious aspects of the program, there was also ample discussion over whether the program follows the research on teaching students to read. Dempsey, the agency official managing the review process, said the “product scored very well” among the reviewers, who examined whether it covers state standards and is considered “suitable” for classrooms.

“I think the big question is,” Maynard said, ‘Does it work?’ ”

The idea for a Jewish charter school in Oklahoma could gather steam following last week’s hotly contested vote to approve a virtual Catholic charter school in the state.

“This is the logical progression in terms of what the Constitution says,” said Peter Deutsch, who veers sharply from his party on the issue. “I still believe in a lot of things the Democrats believe in, but school choice is a civil rights issue in this generation.”

A Jewish charter would allow Deutsch to offer families something he couldn’t when he founded Ben Gamla Charter School in Hollywood, Florida, in 2007 — an education not only focused on Hebrew language, culture and history, but the tenets of Judaism. 

It also opens a window into a sometimes uncomfortable intersection of church, state and market forces as Oklahoma pushes the nation into uncharted legal territory.

“I always know it’s a hot topic when my phone blows up before it’s on the cover of the Wall Street Journal or CNN,” Maury Litwack, founder of Teach Coalition, said Friday during about the Catholic charter. With groups in Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, the coalition is affiliated with the Orthodox Union, which supports synagogues and youth programs. 

Deutsch visited Oklahoma in January to meet with Jewish leaders. But not all groups share his interest. After last week’s vote, the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City, a nonreligious group, called the charter board’s decision unconstitutional. 

The Statewide Virtual Charter Board voted 3-2 to approve the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School despite warnings from Attorney General Gentner Drummond that it violates state law.

Drummond is currently . In his opinion, a board member added just three days before the decision technically shouldn’t have voted because state law says new appointments don’t take effect until Nov. 1. Bob Bobek, a former state board of education member, replaced Barry Beauchamp, a retired superintendent. Before the vote, Robert Franklin, the board’s chair, asked Bobek to recuse himself, but he refused. 

The possible invalidation of the vote would likely be only a temporary setback because the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa can appeal to the state board. Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, a policy organization, said he has even “more confidence in that scenario” because Gov. Kevin Stitt, who the application, appointed the board members.

The case for religious charters could also get considerable ballast if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to hear a that asks whether charter schools are public or private. On June 22, the U.S. Supreme Court will discuss whether to hear Charter Day School Inc. v. Peltier, in which a charter school argues that because it’s a nonprofit, it should be free to enforce a dress code requiring girls to wear skirts. 

Both charter leaders and advocates for religious freedom say the court could help settle the debate over whether charters can explicitly teach religion. If the court declines to hear it, a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit that charters are public schools acting on behalf of the state would stand.

“The 4th Circuit is a major loss” for those pushing for religious charters, said Derek Black, a University of South Carolina law professor. “And if the Supreme Court declines to hear it, that is a major affirmation of that loss.”

But others agree with Deutsch that some parents want publicly funded educational options that include faith-based schools.  

“Yes, we have to follow the law,” Lynn Norman-Teck, executive director of the Florida Charter School Alliance, said about the that charters be nonsectarian. But she added that charter schools “absolutely” have to understand parent demand “and the evolution of education.”

She remembers when Deutsch was trying to convince the Broward County Board of Education to approve the first Ben Gamla school, two years after he left Congress following a failed Senate run.

Some worried it would be hard to divorce the instruction of Hebrew, the language of Judaism, from teaching the faith itself.

Eleanor Sobel, then a school board member and later a state senator, was among the most outspoken opponents, telling reporters that it would be to monitor whether Judaism was actually part of the curriculum. Even after it opened, the board told the school to until officials were satisfied that teachers weren’t advocating religion. The restriction a few weeks later.

Norman-Teck said she doesn’t hear those concerns anymore and that Ben Gamla, now a network of six schools, serves a diverse population including Black and Caribbean students. 

“They proved the board wrong,” she said. “They were very careful that that line wasn’t crossed.”

But a lot has changed in Florida in 16 years. If he was developing the school today, Deutsch said he would establish “a Jewish voucher school” because of the explosion of private school choice in Florida. In fact, in Florida’s Jewish day schools were receiving a state scholarship even before Gov. Ron DeSantis signed legislation in March that made all students eligible for a voucher or education savings account worth about $8,500.

Ironically, an Oklahoma charter would allow Deutsch to accomplish something his critics in Florida feared he would do there: create a public school with an explicitly Jewish curriculum.

With the political hurdle in Oklahoma largely eliminated, Deutsch said his biggest problem might be practical: finding enough interested Jews to fill a school.

“I spoke with every Jew I could find near Oklahoma City,” Deutsch said. Currently, that’s a small number; of Oklahoma’s nearly 4 million residents are Jewish. But he added, “There are families that I believe would move to Oklahoma if there was a Jewish religious charter school.”

Friday’s virtual webinar featured Michael Helfand of Pepperdine University and Notre Dame University’s Nicole Garnett — both law professors who focus on religious liberty. Garnett argues religious organizations that want to open charters should be able to receive public funds, much like faith-based adoption agencies and soup kitchens.

But Helfand is less convinced that if the Supreme Court takes up the North Carolina case, justices will rule that charters are private. Despite recent decisions favoring public funds for religious schools, he expects the court will decide it’s time for some “boundaries on this kind of general momentum.”