Watch Ryan Walters flail
How big is the OSDE's exodus? How isolated is Walters from agency employees? Bigger and more than you can possibly imagine and it can't be ignored.
The you know what is finally hitting Ryan Walters’ fan, because just as Walters attempted a victory lap Thursday for 117 Oklahoma schools coming off the state’s Comprehensive Support and Improvement list, a victory that had next to nothing to do with his department of education and plenty to do with Joy Hofmeister’s, two different stories, one turned out by The Oklahoman’s Murray Evans and one from KFOR’s Spencer Humphrey, detailed what’s really going on at the agency Walters, as state superintendent, pretends to run.
Evans’ reporting gave us the real figures of the very real exodus from OSDE.
As it turns out, more than 130 employees have left since Walters took office, at least half of which have left since July.
We only know this now because, in violation of the law, the Oklahoma Open Records Act, Walters’ department refused to answer multiple requests for information it’s required to give up, leaving the newspaper to find a different source for the info, which it did, complete with the internal resignation letters those employees fired off.
As for Humphrey’s story, remember Pamela Smith-Gordon, originally a true believer in Walters, who joined the education department, as Humphrey described, as its “Program Manager of Grant Development and Compliance.”
She lasted only four months, primarily because Walters was never there and even when he was, getting to his office required first getting into a locked hallway and, ultimately, passing an armed guard, and even when she tried e-mailing him for guidance or cooperation in trying to receive millions in grant money, she was told to quit reaching out to him.
She penned a famous resignation letter she made public in October, but Humphrey got her to go deep on the record for a six minute story on KFOR’s 10 p.m. news, and what he couldn’t fit on the air, he relayed in a still bigger story for KFOR’s website.
“Our schools did not receive allocations, some of them, not until January,” Smith-Gordon told KFOR. “If we do this for the next three years, our schools will cave …
“If it’s not any better this year, I think our rural schools will cave. I think that’s probably the purpose, that if we have less schools, then the monies can go to privates and charters.”
Let’s put a highlight on that.
Smith-Gordon is no blue dot. Her Facebook page celebrates God, the military, veterans, livestock, Israel, dogs, additional voting regulations, an alleged COVID coverup and, among other things, three days ago, a shared message from somebody named Darryl Bunn, whose profile picture is a picture of Donald Trump, that reads “If you’re better off now than you were 4 years ago, you’re probably an illegal.”
AND EVEN SHE now believes Walters’ plan all along has been to move tax dollars out of public schools and into private and charter schools.
Geez Louise.
You know how you can tell so much from bad guys’ reactions to the bad news in which they’re implicated?
Walters and company did not disappoint.
Trying to get comment from OSDE, The Oklahoman sent agency spokesman Dan Isett several questions pertinent to the story they were preparing to run, the answers to which would be used in the story.
They did, and here’s Islett’s response:
The Oklahoman is fake news ... (T)hey continue to lie about SDE and throw a fit that Supt. Walters has brought accountability to a dumpster fire of an agency led by their darling Democrat Joy Hofmeister.
Walters himself took to Twitter/X to make his feelings about the story known.
“Absolutely, we’ve cut down the staff here,” he said, confirming the story, and then telling a lie. “Absolutely, we’ve saved tax payer dollars.”
The second part’s a lie because not employing the people charged with helping students, teachers, schools and districts, not to mention securing funding to help better educate Oklahoma children and teenagers saves nobody any money. It’s just a disservice to those the agency’s designed to support.
It’s preposterously, horrendously, impossibly bad government.
Of course, Walters called The Oklahoman the “Jokelahoman,” “fake news” and a “fake newspaper.”
He would have loved the old Oklahoman of the 50s, 60s and 70s, I’m sure. Yet, having finally become a paper that looks out for the public interest, Walters can’t deal with it.
Humphrey also sought OSDE comment about the story he reported for KFOR.
He got it and here’s how he reported it.
Isett did not specifically answer any of the questions, but said he believes Smith-Gordon’s accusations, as a whole, are ‘vile and inaccurate.’
It’s never a citizen looking out for students, teachers, schools, their community, the state? It’s never somebody asking, legitimately, for a little accountability.
Nope, assholes like that have only one gear and that’s it, to destroy the truth-teller, the concerned citizen, the whistleblower, the messenger, even one like Smith-Gordon, who desperately wanted to do Walters’ bidding, only to realize it’s Walters who Walters looks out for, not the folks his agency’s designed to benefit.
A little more about the stories.
For The Oklahoman, Evans did not just give a number, but details. Here’s a piece of it:
Some high-profile departures were previously reported, including those of the general counsel and the rest of the agency’s legal staff, the chief of staff, the executive director of accreditation and the program manager for grant development and compliance.
But other key personnel also have stepped down, including the manager for federal programs, the executive director of the school personnel records division, the chief financial officer, the deputy director of human resources, the program director for family and community engagement and the procurement manager, among others. All told, at least 23 people with “director” or “manager” titles or executive roles have departed since July. Some had not joined the agency until after Walters took over.
The departures were throughout the agency, judging from the resignation letters or termination notices with titles listed. The agency’s office of school support has lost at least seven employees. The agency’s SoonerStart program — an early intervention program designed to meet the needs of families with infants or toddlers — lost at least four employees. The early childhood division lost at least three people, as did the comptroller’s office, which handles finances.
All four people in the agency’s legal department have left since the beginning of March, although there were no resignation letters or termination notices for two junior attorneys. Walters’ first communications director, Justin Holcomb, has left, as has the assistant to Isett.
Here’s a little more of Humphrey’s work for KFOR:
Since she resigned, Smith-Gordon has spent a lot of time reflecting on what she saw – and didn’t see – during her four months working in the Hodge building.
“I’ve never met [Walters]. I’ve never met him. I’ve never seen him there that I know of,” Smith-Gordon said. “But there were weeks on end that no one was available.”
Earlier this year, News 4 reported Walters and OSDE spent thousands in taxpayer dollars on travel expenses. That included expenses for attending a movie premiere and recording a podcast in Texas, attending a Moms for Liberty conference in Pennsylvania, and traveling to Washington D.C to meet with a guest-booker for Fox News.
News 4 also reported Walters’ administration spent tens of thousands in taxpayer dollars to hire a Washington D.C.-based PR firm to book him on national talk shows.
“I do know that he was on TV often, many times when I needed to get in touch with him—he was traveling,” Smith-Gordon said. “It just wasn’t a good situation. I don’t know of any other person that can actually get paid for a job and never be there.”
It’s a good question.
One that any governor worth their salt should want answered.
Too bad we have one who’s not.
It’s also one state house speaker Charles McCall should want an answered, and one state senate pro tem Greg Treat should want answered.
Certainly it’s one appropriations and budget education subcommittee chairman Mark McBride wants answered, though he appears stymied to raise holy hell about it without McCall joining him.
Politics.
State house Democrats can continue clamoring for Walters’ impeachment but, as we know, super minorities are powerless
At the very least, thanks to fantastic reporting that gets to the bottom of things, no elected official can defend Walters with a straight face and, as far as I can tell, they’ve quit trying.
It’s lonely at the top?
It’s much lonelier when you’re falling to the bottom.
More than ever, Ryan Walters is on his way.
As a young boy, I remember lying on my Grandad's back in the living room of their small little house in Alva in 1952. He was watching the TV news, and I was just being a kid who loved his Grandfather so much. Eisenhower was first running for the presidency, and he said to me: "These republicans will ruin our country". Now, Eisenhower was a good man who tried to work for the good of the nation, but after him republicans became a blight on our nation, culminating in the elections of such thugs as nixon and trump.
Even with the crappy weather, I still liked Oklahoma so many years later. I even moved my family back from sunny Southern California in 2004—we originally moved there in 1985—and took a teaching position at Norman North HS. I immediately noticed the shift in political winds in Norman, always known as the bastion of Democratic ideals in the state. Over my ten year tenure at NN, I watched in dejection as Norman segued into just another gop rathole like the rest of the state. When my grandson Paul Reed graduated from Norman High as a valedictorian and well-regarded baseball player in 2014, he received a deal from Pomona College in SoCal, and we loaded up the family for a return to The Golden State.
The final straw for us was 2008 when President Obama failed to win a single county in Oklahoma.
So, while I certainly support your continued magnifying glass on this Walters cretin, I just see nothing changing until the abject poverty of the state finally overwhelms the common folk and they see the light regarding republicans and their allegiance to the wealthy. It is mind-numbing to see the poorest of people continue to support the gop, year after year, while that criminal enterprise does its worst to destroy every semblance of a decent lifestyle for the average Okie.
Keep up the good fight, Clay. Continue to shed light on the true reasons behind so many Oklahomans poor quality of existence. When the bad guys have control of everything, especially the education system, it's a guarantee that nothing will ever change. Ignorance breeds poverty.
Thank you.