Time's A-Wastin' To Save Public Ed

I am not a conspiracy theorist. But sometimes, in politics, things happen that make you wonder. Take, for example, House Speaker Charles McCall’s recent about-face on investigating state Superintendent Ryan Walters.

As you recall, the speaker rebuffed a growing number of Republicans who urged him publicly to launch an impeachment inquiry. Yet, two days later, McCall abruptly authorized the Legislative Office of Fiscal Transparency [LOFT] to dig into Walters’ potential mismanagement.

What changed in 48 hours?

The fact more Republicans signed onto the impeachment inquiry request, many undoubtedly receiving phone calls from constituents dismayed by the state superintendent’s non-stop attacks on their local superintendents and teachers?

Or that the term-limited McCall perhaps came to understand his initial decision was a colossal political blunder that threatened to end his speaker years on a sour note, maybe even derail his dreams of future office?

Or that Capitol poohbahs somehow got a heads-up the U.S. Department of Education was about to drop a bomb – a blistering 98-page report that took Walters’ department to task for its handling of about $2.7 billion in federal funds?

Intriguing, yes. Maybe even guilty-pleasure-ish entertaining when a lathered-up Walters then all but demanded the House immediately launch impeachment proceedings against him.

Theatrics aside, what’s all-too-often missing in conversations about Walters’ chaotic superintendentship is its actual impact on Oklahoma schools, students, teachers and staff.

The fall semester is underway, and Oklahoma schools still aren’t entirely certain how much money they have to work with. That’s a problem when you’re trying to fill teaching positions with qualified personnel.

Teachers in off-the-state-formula districts still are awaiting legislatively ordered pay raises. Funds for enhanced school security, for life-saving asthma inhalers, and for paid maternity leave didn’t arrive as promised.

That’s likely just the tip of the mismanagement fallout that could further rock Oklahoma’s public school system.

While Oklahoma is not alone in receiving less-than-glowing marks from the feds, taxpayers should be outraged that a Walters-led state department failed to properly account for billions of dollars in at least 32 of 52 categories.

Though the report was dated July 25, the review was conducted last December, nearly a full year into Walters’ tenure during which hundreds of agency employees jumped ship and took their expertise and experience with them. Cause-effect?

School districts are adrift in uncertainty and battered by criticism from the state superintendent. It’s a toxic stew threatening to leave a generation of Covid-era students behind, meaning Oklahoma won’t be producing the minds necessary to compete, much less excel, in the 21^st century economy.

It is no conspiracy theory that public education has been under assault for 70 years from deep-pocketed special interests and religious zealots whose goal is to replace “government schools” with for-profit and/or “Christian” schools. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 details the strategy aimed at remaking America. It’s a blueprint to which Walters is devoted.

“Most Americans can’t comprehend education policy that actively undermines and destroys public education,” writes Andrew L. Seidel, author, attorney and Americans United for Separation of Church and State vice president.

“But that has been a conservative goal since public schools were desegregated in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 … The end goal is to funnel students and public money [via vouchers or other schemes] into private Christian schools that can inculcate religion and turn away students that don’t fit the ‘biblically based’ family” as Project 2025 describes it.

Oklahoma’s public schools are in the path of a powerful, un-American, rightwing tornado. Emergency sirens are blaring. The potential carnage can’t wait for a lengthy LOFT investigation. The time to act is now.