Education · Oklahoma City, OK Metro · October 13, 2026
Oklahoma Board Denies Jewish Charter School One Vote Short of Approval
What Alinsky tactic is being used
2 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The decisive blow against Ben Gamla was not a theological argument but its own paperwork: opponents pointed out that founder Peter Deutsch reportedly told a Tulsa rabbi his real first-year goal was 10 students while the application claimed 400. The board was thereby handed a non-religious reason to deny an applicant the federal court had just protected on religious grounds. The tactic worked only because the gap between the written claim and the spoken one was real.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
If a church or Christian group in your area is weighing a charter application, read the draft before it is filed and check that the enrollment projection, budget and governance roster are numbers the founders will repeat under oath. Ask for the sponsor's required financial statements and board minutes in writing, and do not defend an application publicly until you have read it yourself. Close the gap first; an authorizer that cannot find one has to argue the religion question on the merits.
Rule 3
“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
After the Sept. 24 ruling that a charter applicant cannot be excluded solely for religious character, the fight moved off constitutional ground — where the applicant had just won — and onto charter-authorizing technique: enrollment projections, application quality, 'independent weaknesses.' Americans United, the ACLU and FFRF are practiced on that terrain; most religious-liberty supporters are not. The board's 4-3 vote also turned on an arithmetic point outsiders rarely know, that five votes of a nine-member board are needed regardless of absences and vacancies.
Counter-Rule 3 · Preparation and Width
Prepare the unfamiliar ground before you are dragged onto it. "I don't know, I'll find out and come back" beats an improvised answer.
Before the next authorizer meeting, get the board's application rubric, its scoring sheets, and the bylaw setting its voting threshold and quorum, and read them. Learn how enrollment projections and budgets are scored, so the argument can be made in the authorizer's own vocabulary rather than in the vocabulary of conviction. At the microphone, 'I don't know — I will find that and send it to you' is stronger than an improvised answer.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
Know where you stand
The free 4-minute assessment identifies your mountain and your institution’s capture phase — so alerts like this one arrive matched to where you actually stand.
Facing this yourself? Ask. Describe what is happening and get what the book, Scripture, and the law of your state say, with the exact words to use. Your first one is free.