A Tennessee school board has approved an application to establish a Christian charter school after previous efforts to create religious charter schools in another state faced legal challenges and pushback.

At a special meeting on April 28, the Jackson-Madison County School Board in Tennessee unanimously approved four charter school applications. One application was submitted by Union Academy. Jackson-Madison County School System Superintendent Marlon King said he pitched the charter school idea to the president of Union University, a private Christian college in Jackson, Tennessee. The university leader told King his “team jumped all over this.”

A letter of intent filed with the Tennessee State Board of Education outlines the vision for Union Academy. The school will operate as a “faith-based Christian college preparatory” institution serving 206 students in kindergarten through fifth grade in its inaugural 2027–28 school year. By its fifth year, the school plans to serve 326 students in kindergarten through ninth grade. It would eventually expand to 386 students, kindergarten through 12th grade, at full capacity.

In a statement on Monday, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Senior Counsel Mark Lippelmann responded to the approval of what supporters describe as the first religious charter school in the United States.

“Tennessee parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer. The Jackson-Madison County School System Board was right to approve Union Academy’s request to operate as a charter school and should be commended for refusing to engage in unconstitutional discrimination based on the school’s religious character,” he said.

“Alliance Defending Freedom wholeheartedly supports Union Academy in its endeavor to become the nation’s first religious charter school, opening up educational options and freedom for more Tennessee families,” he added.

The effort to establish Union Academy follows a failed attempt to create a religious charter school in Oklahoma.

Although the state approved St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School in 2023, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled the following year that a faith-based charter school receiving taxpayer funding violated the Oklahoma Constitution and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld that ruling in a 4-4 decision last year.

Dr. Richard Land, executive editor of The Christian Post and former president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, raised concerns about publicly funded religious charter schools in an op-ed published by CP last year.

“If the Supreme Court finds a Roman Catholic, publicly funded charter school does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, the result will be revolutionary and I believe catastrophic,” he wrote. “Within a remarkably short time, most of the states that have charter public schools (and most states do) will be flooded with applications for Catholic, Orthodox, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, etc. public charter schools.”

Earlier this year, Oklahoma rejected an application from a group seeking to establish a publicly funded Jewish charter school. A lawsuit soon followed, alleging the denial violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment.

News Source : https://www.christianpost.com/news/school-board-approves-application-for-christian-charter-school.html