When it comes to public education in Oklahoma, stupid is as stupid keeps doing
Ryan Walters’ malfeasance as state superintendent is an old yarn.
He’s a bully.
He cares not one bit about the U.S., nor Oklahoma constitutions.
He can’t wait to purge students from Oklahoma public schools, surely many of them U.S. citizens, though perhaps the offspring of parents who are not.
He chases outrage to gather wind behind his un-American sails and if he can’t do that, he stops on the side of the road and, appealing to the worst within us and among us, creates it himself; not because he’s among the outraged, but because he plays one who is: on television, YouTube, Twitter, even in press releases.
Today’s subject, however, is adjacent to all of that, brought to light in this story from Nuria Martinez-Keel, who covers education for Oklahoma Voice.
It’s adjacent because the legislature is back in session and, though Walters is sure to play his greatest and most intellectually dishonest hits any time of year, in this case he’s hoping to secure significantly more funding for himself and his department.
Thus, his efforts must mostly remain within a certain set of facts, because a still meaningful portion of Republican lawmakers in the state house and senate remain not among the great unwashed, manipulatable, scared-of-their-own-shadow crowd that takes his word for everything.
Here are some of those facts:
• His total budget request, writes Martinez-Keel, would increase the agency’s annual funding by $113 million.
• Of that, $3 million would cover the very particular Lee Greenwood-Donald Trump Bibles he wants to put in every Oklahoma classroom; $2.3 million would go toward a 6 percent raise for education department employees who’ve not received one since 2019; and, as Martinez-Keel reports, “the state is required to pay some of the projected expenses, such as an extra $88.6 million for the rising cost of health insurance for public school employees.”
• As for the raises Walters wants to give department of education employees, even Republican lawmakers have wondered, given the agency exodus — Walters told them the department’s work force has dropped from 520 to 460 — why can’t those savings be turned into raises? Walters answer: it’s just not enough and, further, as Martinez-Keel reported, “a complicating factor is the large number of federally funded salaries at the agency,” according to Walters.
• Walters is also asking for an additional $4 million to increase the teacher maternity leave fund and $500,000 to offer firearms training to teachers.
Got all that?
All of this comes at a moment our regrettable governor, Kevin Stitt, has issued a few legislative priorities.
Here are some of those:
• Stitt wants to cut state income taxes, personal and corporate, by one half of one percent.
• Stitt wants to reduce overall government spending by $1.4 billion and, in that vein, keeps using the phrase “flat budgets,” referencing future expenditures for many state agencies, including the department of education, the governor’s office, the house and senate, the department of corrections, the district attorney’s council, the attorney general’s office, the indigent defense system and the pardon and parole board.
So, sure, it’s interesting Stitt and Walters are at budgetary odds.
It was also interesting Stitt took time to honor Bixby superintendent Rob Miller, who has sued Walters for defamation, for Miller’s no-phone policy in Bixby district classrooms, even with Walters in the room, during Monday’s state of the state address … but this is not that column. I digress
It’s interesting, too, Stitt wants to cut income taxes soon after ending the grocery tax, though I suppose it’s never too late for a Republican politician to put more money in the hands of his donors despite our state having faced a billion-dollar-plus budget shortfall as recently as 2018.
Yet, get into the weeds of it all and what it really is, is infuriating, like can’t this single-party state simply practice not being stupid.
For example:
• Republicans claim to be constitutionalists but, unless the courts step in, the battle’s lost when the big question over Bibles in classrooms is to pay for them or solicit donations for them, rather than should they be there at all?
As a matter of law, they shouldn’t, our state constitution being even more explicit than our nation’s when separating church and state.
• Really, the rising health insurance cost of public school employees requires almost $90 million in additional annual spending?
Why might that be?
Could it have anything to do with said employees being treated like absolute $%&# by their state overseers?
Could it have anything to do with Republicans nationwide refusing to enact common sense gun legislation even their own voters tend to agree with, like universal background checks and an end to automatic weapon availability, without which school shootings have run rampant for far too long.
Could it have anything to do with some, like Walters, trying to bring guns into the classroom by arming teachers, who are surrounded by teenagers and younger in what’s for many a stressful environment?
Could it have something to do with Walters himself accusing public school teachers of grooming, being anti-American, or belonging to terrorist outfits like teachers’ unions?
• You don’t say, the large number of federally funded salaries at the education department complicates giving raises?
That’s so interesting because Walters himself has lauded the Trump Administration’s desire to shut down the U.S. Department of Education, through which so much education in our state is funded in the first place, not to mention so much of our state education department is funded, too.
The irony, disingenuousness, intellectual dishonesty and outright hypocrisy is overwhelming.
Here we have a state superintendent who’s against a federal education department. Yet, without it, public education in Oklahoma might just go away, not to mention a great deal of the state education department that state superintendent claims to lead.
Unless …
You don’t think that’s the whole idea, killing public education?
Because if it was, it might look a lot like this.
Still, this state keeps voting for people, all with the same party affiliation, who have no problem with it.
It’s hard to win when you’re trying to lose.
Stay classy Oklahoma.
Thanks again for clearly laying out this disaster .... poor Oklahoma continues to rank near the very bottom in education .... Ryan wah wah continues to do NOTHING to improve the dismal situation.... he should be ashamed of his failure to make any improvements at all. Louisiana & Mississippi are trembling in fear ... Oklahoma is on track to lock up that title "WORST STATE IN EDUCATION".
So sad for our young people ...and all of us too.
The plan has always been to dismantle public education. The Republicans have played the long game. The uneducated masses are easy to lead and to subjugate. That’s the ultimate plan, an under class beholden to the elite.