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Remember the Names
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
-William Butler Yeats
This week while working, many Oklahomans found distraction watching a reckless, dangerous ordeal. It was a long and twisting journey, full of surprises. You could even call it the epitome of self-sabotage. Eventually, though it had a very predictable outcome: the Legislature once again failed to meet the needs of Oklahomans.
Oh, did you think I was talking about yesterday’s high speed chase in the OKC metro? I missed that. Too many meetings.
That was one guy making a series of bad decisions that ended with him being tazed and captured. Everyone watching knew that would happen. They just didn’t know what would happen first.
The story of this mess of a state started long ago. I could begin with 1992’s State Question 640, which severely limited the ability of the Legislature in a budget crisis such as this. Or maybe with Governor Fallin’s election in 2010. Or her re-election in 2014. For the sake of time, though, I’ll begin with the budget passed by the Legislature and approved in May.
A key piece of filling this year’s budget including passing a cigarette tax fee. Well, the Legislature called it a fee, but it was pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that it was a tax.
Predictably, on August 10th, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled as such. As the Oklahoman wrote at that time:
In an opinion that drew support from every justice, the court noted that the Legislature introduced four bills this year that would have created a similar cigarette “tax,” but the bills were abandoned because of little support. In the final week of session, lawmakers finally adopted the “smoking cessation fee.”
It was unanimous.
This created a huge budget hole and the need for a special session*. For weeks, we’ve seen half-measures and insults called compromises. Finally this week, the dam broke and something appeared to happen.
The Senate voted on a bill – amended to include an increase to the Gross Production Tax – that had support of a majority of House members, just not the 75% required by the Oklahoma Constitution. It received support of all Democrats and all but five Republicans: Brecheen, Dahm, Daniels, Newberry, and Sikes. No surprises there. Any of those five making a conscious choice to help others would have been shocking.
Senate leader Mike Shultz said that this was a long-time coming.
This has been a source of frustration for years. On the other hand, Shultz favored every tax cut that has contributed to the recurring budget shortfalls that have led to our legislative leaders – metaphorically, of course – spinning their wheels in the middle of a field somewhere.
Since this technically wasn’t the bill the House sent to the Senate, it had to be renamed and sent to the House Budget Committee. There we saw a preview of what was coming Wednesday.
Now called HB 1054, the budget plan passed 19-6 out of the Joint Committee on Appropriations and Budget Committee**. Calvey and Murphy voting no was as predictable as was the Oklahoma Supreme Court seeing through the tax/fee façade. Kouplen and Proctor, not as much.
Side note: Since the start of the extraordinary session, two legislators have announced they are leaving the House. Minority Leader Scott Inman is one. Apparently, Steve Kouplen is the new pick to lead the Democrats. Based on this week, maybe they should open the process and choose someone new.
This led to Wednesday, when the House spent two hours taking questions and another hour debating HB 1054.
I tried watching the live stream, when I could. I debated with other superintendents what the final vote would be. Few of us expected it to pass. In fact, most of us thought the final number of yes votes would be even lower than 71.
I follow several journalists during the high holy extraordinary sessions. Catherine Sweeney, Dale Denwalt, and Tres Savage are some of the best. I went through their Twitter feeds today to try to recapture what happened Wednesday. Here are some examples of their work:
Ok, aside from Calvey’s dizzying logic, he makes the point that we should audit everything and find waste, fraud, and abuse. On the other hand, this is Calvey’s sixth term in the Legislature. Before he represented Deer Creek, he represented Del City. He’s one of the state’s longest-tenured lawmakers. Why hasn’t he called for these audits before? Other than casting aspersions on public employees, what has he done?
These make me sad. I don’t understand people who say they support teachers and raises for teachers and then vote no when they have a chance to do something.
Let’s face facts: the 2017 legislative session is now six months into overtime. There has been no leadership and nothing resembling a plan. It shows. Holding the vote open for another hour trying to find more votes didn’t help either.
Honestly, listening to Perryman discuss the budget bill, I thought he’d vote against it. I’ve admired him for years. He’s a true populist and a great public servant. I was having a hard time reconciling all of that.
He voted yes.
This was also a clear breaking point for some. They’d raise taxes on consumers, but not producers. It was the hardest thing for me to swallow.
If you look at the names on those vote boards – the greens in particular – you see a lot of people who expended political capital by voting yes. They are Republicans who voted for tax increases on oil and gas companies. They are Democrats who voted for regressive taxes that disproportionately impact the poor. They are people who realized that ideological purity is no substitute for leadership. You can’t govern if you expect to get your way all the time.
Speaking of Roger Ford (R – Midwest City), he’s been blowing up the Facebook world lately. He’s called out House leadership and been more or less live journaling his frustration. Here’s a sample:
To all the people saying don’t give another dime to our agencies, until after they get audited. Well bless your heart! Audits don’t happen overnight. So I guess we shut Oklahoma down for a couple years while we wait. Audits are not in the scope of this special session, so once again it’s not happening! Why can people not get that? What is so hard to understand about that?
I watched a couple no vote legislators smiling and laughing as they exited, walking right past the disabled adults in the rotunda. Never stopping to see their faces. Your life goes on, but what about them?! You changed their world and don’t give a damn.
But in fairness at least they had the decency to walk past them after they voted no. Unlike the coward that snuck in the back door, gave another representative a thumbs down motion to vote for him and immediately walked out the back door. To that young man, everything I learned about you this past year has turned out to be true. You took great joy at throwing stones at others, while you yourself was living in a glass house. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.
To the ones that held out for a higher GPT, good luck! Any GPT increase drove off with the chartered buses that were parked in front of the Capitol all day. You get 2%, you get 2% and you get 2%. Yay everyone gets 2%! If we can’t get 7, let’s take home nothing! Brilliant idea!!!
Oh yeah, that’s right. There were charter buses there. Here’s a pic.
Enough people – in both parties – held to their principles. As a result, people will suffer.
It’s worth noting that this vote came exactly a year after the vote on State Question 779, which would have given teachers a $5,000 raise. This teacher raise would have been just $3,000, but still, teachers had hope.
With all due respect to the Shawshank Redemption, hope is painful. Hope is thinking that when the stolen truck you’re driving breaks free from the trailer behind you that you’ll be able to elude the police cars and helicopters that surround you. I woke up believing that it might pass. After all, it passed the Senate handily. We all want the same things, right?
Unfortunately, with all the posturing, grandstanding, guest appearances, and unmoored contempt in the House, again, we watched as nothing happened.
I can’t explain the people who sided with Cleveland and Calvey. One walked around the Capitol with a fart machine. The other once threatened self-immolation. I’ll let you google which is which.
I can explain what happens now.
See what you’ve done? I agree with the governor.
You can read the impact of our state’s legislative impotence from an adoptive parent:
Nine years ago, I stepped up and took a large financial burden off the state by adopting three older, traumatized children. In turn, the State agreed to provide certain resources that were minimal to begin with and have eroded over time. More cuts will come down the road if we don’t fix our systemic budget issues very soon. It looks as though lawmakers will probably be able to stave off cataclysmic cuts for now. But short-term measures like raiding the Rainy Day fund instead of making courageous decisions are what got us into this situation in the first place. Unless lawmakers sustainably raise revenues – as voters overwhelmingly want – these near-calamities will continue, and families like mine will bear the cost.
A mother of a disabled teen tried to get answers from legislators:
“We’re concerned, we’re worried,” Jones said as she met with Rep. Shane Stone, D-Oklahoma City. “My son is the client of the Goodwill adult day center in Chickasha, and our understanding is that without a fix on this current budget crisis is that it will close. They will not be able to keep their doors open and there’s nothing else for my kiddo.”As she walked the hallways late Thursday afternoon, she hoped the legislators she talked with would understand and maybe change their “no” to a “yes.”
I have to say that one representative in particular caught my attention for her remarks on Wednesday.
It’s important to remember that over the summer, House Speaker Charles McCall stripped Leslie Osborn of her JCAB chairmanship because she spoke her mind:
Osborn’s removal comes one day after she and two other Republican state representatives criticized house leadership for comments made after the Oklahoma Department of Human services announced last week it was cutting $30 million in services because of a lack of funding from the state.
The men who opposed McCall, by the way, were stripped of nothing.
This all makes me wonder why the Democrats and Republicans in the Legislature don’t change leadership and find someone committed to helping the state. Nobody is entitled to those positions for the duration of their legislative service.
Osburn is right about one thing in particular. We really must remember who voted yes and who voted no on this. I’ve seen written explanations from members of both parties. I accept none of them.
Our system of government requires serious people who know what it means to lead. It requires voters who hold them accountable.
*Technically, it’s called an Extraordinary Session. Indeed it is that.
**Speaking of government inefficiency, I love this committee name.
It’s getting late. Do something.
Used by permission from OSSBA
What you see above is real. In 77 days, public schools in Oklahoma have lost over $93 million in state funding. Oklahoma City Public Schools has lost the most, just over $5.3 million. Tulsa Public is next – just under $4.9 million.
In Mid-Del, we’re dealing with over $1.9 million in losses. As I’ve mentioned before, this is money that all districts planned on having based on the state budget passed by the Legislature (and signed by the governor) last May. Here’s the notice we received from the Oklahoma State Department of Education today:
Based on available funds, the State Aid formula payment for the month of May will be paid at the accumulative amount of 88.62 percent instead of the scheduled 91 percent of the current adjusted allocation. Revenue collections for the May State Aid payment are approximately $43.1 million short of the funds needed to make the scheduled 91 percent payment. The accumulative percentage of 88.62 percent includes the total amount short for this fiscal year updated for cash received through May. The cash flow shortage of $43.1 million for the May payment supersedes the $36.3 million for the March and April payments.
The May payment, available to districts on Thursday, May 11, is based on funds collected as of May 9, 2017. To calculate your payment, use the most current adjusted allocation times accumulated percentage minus paid to date to equal the amount of payment. The amount of funds collected as of May 9, 2017, is presented below.
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Education Reform Revolving Fund (1017) Adjusted for Revenue Shortfall has collected 84.13 percent of the Adjusted Appropriated $657,802,801
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Common Education Technology Fund has collected 85.50 percent of the Appropriated $41,168,478
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FY17 Mineral Leasing Fund has collected 52.57 percent of the Appropriated $3,610,000
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General Revenue Adjusted Revenue Failure has collected 90.91 percent of the Adjusted Appropriated $1,027,324,288.85
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FY17 OK Lottery Fund has collected 92.96 percent of the Appropriated $23,397,757
More losses will come in June. Meanwhile, our Legislature continues looking for roughly $900 million to make up for a shortfall to next year’s budget.
To see what each district has lost to date, follow this link.
Several people around the state have asked me why they’re not hearing more from superintendents about what these cuts mean. Last year, after all, we went on and on and on.
I can’t answer for all superintendents. In my case, I’m too busy to spin my wheels. I need to focus on things I can impact. It’s not that the legislators who represent my district don’t hear us. Nothing could be farther from the truth. They’re involved and astute.
I’ve been fighting for five years. It’s exhausting. Our day jobs don’t slow down just because we’re trying to keep our legislators informed. They’re aware of the problem. Some are even working on Sundays (which is still allowed as long as the Ten Commandments statue isn’t at the Capitol, I guess) to try to fix it.
Maybe too many people insist on getting credit. Maybe we’re making a mountain out of a molehill. And maybe our executive branch is too busy making dumb decisions like insisting on a $2.4 million test that means nothing or throwing state money down the commode by moving offices around for no reason at all.
This isn’t the time for anyone to play hero. If you’re in the leadership in the Legislature, you were there when this problem was created. It also isn’t the time for blame. Not yet, anyway.
Fix it, and all legislators deserve praise. Fail to do anything meaningful, and none do. It’s all or nothing. I’m trying to make a budget for the upcoming school year using numbers I don’t have. I’m not really in the mood to pat anyone on the back and say thanks for trying. Reading the Tulsa World tonight, it seems I’m not alone:
Uncertainty about state appropriations, which has a host of area school districts delaying their annual budget process for the new fiscal year.
“We’re tired of chasing rumors and ghosts,” West said. “This is the dance we’ve been doing every year for three years, but this year, we’re in a wait-and-see pattern. We’re not going to hire anyone until June. What I’m worried about is somebody is going to take another job. We’re having to put them off.”
Sapulpa Public Schools is holding off on offering new contracts to its first- and second-year teachers who have been employed on a temporary basis and Owasso Public Schools leaders say they’re hoping that building up their savings will help see them through Fiscal Year 2018, but they can’t be sure.
Leaders of Union, Jenks and Broken Arrow public schools are also waiting to finalize budget plans for next year, and being cautious about communicating how programming would be affected by cuts, until they have more information from the state.
Because Collinsville is a growing district, with 165 new students the past two years and 100 more expected for 2017-18, West said he has the luxury of being able to commit to offering new employment contracts to all current teachers.
So we wait. And we’re not silent.
And I’m not alone.
Craig, I’m too tired to sigh. Plus, there’s the $1.9 million. That has me pretty bummed out.
Our state leaders persist in working on our behalf, though.
Good thing they’re focused!
I can’t imagine what backlash legislators would face if they fail to do their job. It’s not just public schools. It’s all state agencies. It’s all core state services. This state has consciously chosen to re-elect people who willfully made us go broke. Elections have consequences. Hopefully, at some point, failing to lead will too.
Don’t know much about history?
Yesterday, Governor Mary Fallin vetoed SB 2, which would have eliminated the state test for high school US History. This test costs the state of Oklahoma $2.4 million. It means nothing to the students who take it. As with all high-stakes tests, it forces teachers to narrow instruction to what they think will be assessed. Below is her reasoning.
I want to break down her veto statement one sentence at a time.
Senate bill 2 moves Oklahoma backwards.
Let that sentence linger in the air a minute. During the 6+ years of Fallin’s leadership, can you think of anything else that has moved our state backwards? Could it be three consecutive years of budget collapses? Other than our roads, bridges, schools, colleges, health care, prisons, law enforcement, and state parks, we’re having a fantastic decade! The 2010s will go down in history…oh, wait, they won’t. And even if they do, we won’t be able to afford the history books.
History is a vital component of a student’s academic coursework. It grounds students in our nation’s founding principles and our Constitution…
I agree that history is vital. And with US history dating back to 1607, we can’t cover it all in one year. That’s why the state breaks down the standards into three grade spans:
- Grade 5 – Creating the United States: 1607-1806
- Grade 8 – Creating the United States: 1754-1877
- High School – 1877-Present
So the high school test covers the last 140 years. With all due respect, that doesn’t exactly include the nation’s founding.
…and teaches that American exceptionalism led the world to unite behind the concepts that liberty and freedom are fundamental human rights.
Not to be a noodge, but I don’t remember the world exactly uniting behind those principles. They’re great ideals. They’re core American values. And we’ve engaged in wars to end tyranny, which is a great thing.
This span of US History begins with Reconstruction, delves into immigration, westward expansion, and the industrial revolution before discussing WWI. It covers “social, cultural, and economic events between the World Wars,” such as the Great Depression. It moves through the Cold War all the way to our response to 9/11.
It’s more than our founding principles. It’s the narrative of how we got from that ontological perspective to where we are today. It includes our triumphs and our failings. It’s a mix of triumphs and human failings.
A test of facts, dates, and names doesn’t capture that.
In 2016, only 62 percent of students in Oklahoma scored proficient or advanced on their End of Instruction Exam on US History.
If you’ve read my blog for any time at all, you know I’m not really a fan of the single out-of-context statistic. Here are the state pass rates for the high school US History EOI since 2010, when Fallin was elected governor:
- 2010 75%
- 2011 80%
- 2012 77%
- 2013 80%
- 2014 86%
- 2015 79%
- 2016 62%
If testing is so important, then why did scores go down? Where was your leadership during this time, Governor Fallin?
Or maybe it’s not about leadership. It could be that a new test and a new cut score had something to do with the 62%. Still, I wouldn’t rule out her leadership. This is her circus, after all.
If US History is not measured through a test, its importance in school will be lessened.
That’s just a slap in the face. Apparently the governor thinks our history teachers are incapable of doing their jobs. Strangely, I don’t recall her praising them in 2014 when the proficient rate was much higher.
I’m reminded of the time in 2015 that our governor put her knowledge of our founding principles on display:
You know there are three branches of our government. You have the Supreme Court, you have the legislative branch and you have the people – the people and their ability to vote.
Yes, she really said that. She actually forgot the branch of government she leads.
If only there had been a test.
The good thing is that we can fix this. Our Legislature may be struggling to find agreement on a budget right now, but they were pretty solid when they sent this bill to Fallin. The House vote was 65-23 with 10 absences. The Senate vote was 31-10 with 7 absences.
Now is the time to act. The governor’s action was predictable, just as it was two years ago when she vetoed HB 2625, giving parents a voice on third grade retention. At that time, the House voted 79-17 and the Senate voted 45-2 to override her veto.
That was one of the most critical moments we’ve had in the last few years. It showed how strong public education advocates can be when we unite. The state superintendent at that time called it pathetic and outrageous, which was a pretty strong indication we were right.
Maybe that helps us understand this veto. Rep. Katie Henke, the author of HB 2625 two years ago, is the house author for SB 2. The senate author is JJ Dossett, a former teacher who has been very outspoken on education and budget issues this year. I wouldn’t sleep on the role that spite plays in decisions such as this.
We don’t need to waste money on a meaningless test. Another $2.4 million could save about 55 teaching positions. Not that I’m counting.
Besides, if we wanted something resembling authentic assessment, it would look so much different. We can’t afford to continue insulting our teachers. Please call your state senator and representative and ask them to vote to override the veto.
They left the Capitol before 11:00 am today, but their voicemail works. Fill it up.
Oh no, not again!
Here we go again. Today, just as has happened the last few months, school superintendents received our latest notice that our state aid checks would be short.
Based on available funds, the State Aid formula payment for the month of April will be paid at the accumulative amount of 79 percent instead of the scheduled 81 percent of the current adjusted allocation. Revenue collections for the April State Aid payment are approximately $36.3 million short of the funds needed to make the scheduled 81 percent payment. The accumulative percentage of 79 percent includes the total amount short for this fiscal year updated for cash received through April. The cash flow shortage of $36.3 million for the April payment supersedes the $18.9 million for the March payment.
The April payment, available to districts on Thursday, April 13, is based on funds collected as of April 11, 2017. To calculate your payment, use the most current adjusted allocation times accumulated percentage minus paid to date to equal the amount of payment. The amount of funds collected as of April 11, 2017, is presented below.
- Education Reform Revolving Fund (1017) Adjusted for Revenue Shortfall has collected 72.13 percent of the Adjusted Appropriated $657,802,801
- Common Education Technology Fund has collected 77.35 percent of the Appropriated $41,168,478
- FY17 Mineral Leasing Fund has collected 52.57 percent of the Appropriated $3,610,000
- General Revenue Adjusted Revenue Failure has collected 82.05 percent of the Adjusted Appropriated $1,027,324,288.95
- FY17 OK Lottery Fund has collected 85.08 percent of the Appropriated $23,397,757
Your Notice of Payment report can be found under Payment Notices in Single Sign On at https://sdeweb01.sde.ok.gov/SSO2/Signin.aspx. For your convenience, a report showing the 81 percent compared to the 79 percent is located under Important Notices on the State Aid Web page at http://sde.ok.gov/sde/state-aid.
We will be closely monitoring each month’s cash and make adjustments as needed. If you have questions, please contact State Aid.
We’ve become accustomed to mid-year cuts. It’s a sad but true fact. They still hurt. Every month is a new stomach punch.
In Mid-Del alone, our share of the shortfall is $813,200. That’s about 18 teaching positions. In other words, when we presented our board a budget last summer based on the funding promised by the state, we were at least $813,200 long on the revenue side. With two more months to go in the fiscal year, it’ll easily pass a million.
Last summer, we projected that we would end the year with a stable fund balance (carry over), and we’ve worked throughout the year to save money where we can. Maybe the $5 million we cut from the budget last year wasn’t enough. Apparently we should have done more.
Maybe our class sizes aren’t big enough yet. Maybe we should cut some bus routes. Maybe there are too many sports. Maybe the four-day week should get a closer look by those of us who aren’t there yet.
If we keep enduring cuts, there are no good choices. We either make Terrible Decision A, or we make Terrible Decision B. No amount of shaming by legislators or state officials will change that.
I get it. Oklahoma is broke. We’re broker than broke. Every state agency is enduring cuts. I’m glad to see more of them speaking out about what those losses mean too. And I know many great lawmakers ready and willing to help us, if the right coalition comes together. No Republican can afford, politically, to carry the flag for tax increases alone. That’s just reality.
Unfortunately, we have a variety of legislators representing Oklahomans at the Capitol. Some, conveniently, choose not to believe in things like the teacher shortage, budget collapses, or even science. I can’t tell you that all the legislators wanting to help public education will be enough. It’s going to take pressure on those who really don’t value what we do.
We need to explain to some, still, why having a budget carryover is not a way to fund teacher raises. We need to share our stories about class sizes we’ve increased and programs we’ve cut. We need to do it boldly. This isn’t the time to mince words.
Do we accept this as the new normal, Craig? Not only no, but hell no. Our kids and teachers deserve better than to have a bunch of passive leaders who roll over at this. The companies that allegedly won’t come to Oklahoma because of all the four day weeks are probably smart enough to be scared off by the state’s scant per pupil funding as well.
We are in a man-made fiscal crisis. If we didn’t vote, or if we voted for the people who continue to cut off revenue streams for basic state services, we are to blame.
Oh, and one other thing, in case you’ve missed it. While we weren’t watching, the state has spent the entire Rainy Day Fund.
In fact, officials admitted earlier this month that the state’s constitutional reserve — known as the Rainy Day Fund — has been emptied in order to pay bills and meet payroll.
Doerflinger repeated earlier assurances that enough revenue will come in during the final three months of the fiscal year to replace the borrowed money, but said the situation still calls for new revenue sources.
“The fact we have had to borrow from these funds shows just how serious the state’s revenue problem is,” he said.
Doerflinger would not rule out the possibility of a second round of spending cuts before the end of the budget year on June 30.
March receipts totaled $352.1 million, or 9 percent below the official estimate and 10.7 percent below actual collections for the same month a year ago.
Year-to-date, general revenue collections are 2.8 percent below the estimate and 6.2 percent, or $231.3 million, below the prior year.
Whether depleting the Rainy Day Fund without legislative approval is legal or not really isn’t for me to decide. I’m not a lawyer, but I know when something sounds sketchy.
What this means is that our state budget hole is closer to $1.3 billion. That framework for teacher raises is meaningless unless the state fills that hole. All the rhetoric in the world means nothing if our elected officials can’t agree on where to find new revenue.
As the image below shows, our legislators and governor passed a budget last May that hasn’t been met by reality. That’s three in a row. It’s trend behavior.
Conveniently, no cuts from the budget happened until after the November elections. Go figure.
We’ve cut the fat. We’re cutting limbs. There isn’t much left.
Doerflinger says…
As you probably know by now, the state of Oklahoma declared a revenue failure again this week.
For the second time in two fiscal years, the state of Oklahoma has declared a revenue failure, meaning tax collections are below the estimates used to pass the state budget last session.
“Our revenues are difficult at best, and maybe they fall into the category of pathetic,” Secretary of Finance Preston Doerflinger told a packed room of elected officials, bureaucrats and media this morning. “Our situation is dire. I beg you to have an appreciation for the situation we have before us.”
What this means is that state agencies will receive a reduction in funding from what was budgeted at the beginning of the fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30. For public education, that’s over $46 million in mid-year cuts.
Doerflinger could not emphasize enough how critical this situation is.
Doerflinger also alerted the board to an even larger budget hole for Fiscal Year 2018 than had been anticipated: $878 million, up from $868 million. He more than subtly urged the board — and legislators — to consider Fallin’s bold revenue ideas.
“I don’t know how much more I can emphasize that the time for action is now,” Doerflinger said. “It’s not a game. We need new revenues.”
Doerflinger spoke at a podium directly in front of Fallin and Lamb, who stepped down from Fallin’s cabinet last week because he said he could not support the governor’s proposal for sales tax to be implemented on a variety of services.
“The governor is a pragmatic person, a reasonable person,” Doerflinger said to a silent, crowded room. “She has put forward a bold proposal. I know she and I look forward to specific plans to be revealed by other people involved in this process.”
Fallin’s bold proposal includes eliminating the grocery sales tax and corporate income tax. She would replace them with a menu of taxes on services, such as tattoos, oil changes, and haircuts.They also want to increase the cigarette tax.
The governor’s estimates (which are Doerflinger’s estimates) are huge. I question whether they’re reliable. These are the same people who have worked with legislative leaders to “balance” the state budget each of the last three years, leading to massive shortfalls every time.
According to Fallin’s estimates, applying sales tax to services would bring in $1,703,879,742 (that’s 1.7 Billion dollars with a B) to government coffers. Of that, the state government would receive $934,247,035, county governments would get $648,274,017, and cities would collect $121,358,690.
This is essentially a 10% tax hike on small businesses and consumers across the state, as the cost of doing business and obtaining services will go up about 10%.
Fallin lists 164 different categories she wants taxed. This includes all manner of construction-related contracting services, cable TV, pet grooming, carpet cleaning, business and legal services, utilities for residential use, funeral services, medical services… the list is very long, and you can view it here.
It’s not a very good plan, but at least it’s a plan.
I’ve been pretty quiet the last few weeks. I’ve seen lots of revenue plans (such as nearly tripling the beer tax) and teacher pay raise bills. What I haven’t seen is any momentum behind a solid idea to fix the fundamental problems in this state.
For three years, we’ve listened to state leaders blame the budget hole on low oil and gas prices. In her State of the State address this year, Fallin even blamed online shopping for contributing to lower state revenues.
These things contribute, but not as much as the tax cuts our state has passed during the last ten years. And yes, I know that dates back into Brad Henry’s second term as governor.
The Oklahoma Policy Institute estimates the annual cost of these tax cuts at more than $1 billion. You and I have barely felt those cuts. Most are large cuts for the wealthy and cuts for oil and gas. Other states that rely on fossil fuels for revenue haven’t been hit this hard. They also haven’t decimated their own tax base to intentionally starve the beast of core state services.
Repeating the gravity of the situation, Doerflinger spoke Friday to a Republican group in Tulsa. You can watch clips of his remarks at the Tulsa World website. I’ve transcribed a few sections:
0:25 At some point, we have to determine what type of state we want. Do we want to invest in things like common education or not, and if not, and if we’re not, then we should just tell teachers – and I have friends that are teachers, I have friends that are corrections workers, I have friends that are child welfare workers – at some point we just need to tell those people that we don’t care, or we need to decide that we need to invest in those areas. And I’m telling you, that there are still areas and places we can improve from an efficiency standpoint.
Based on the last few years, I’m reluctant to say what kind of state his audience envisions. Fallin is still governor. We keep digging deeper holes in our budget. An actual plan to raise teacher salaries by $5,000 was defeated at the polls in November. Like it or not, this is the Oklahoma standard right now.
1:50 And agencies have peddled doubt and fear for so long that it’s hard for you to believe me whenever I stand up in front of you and try to make an argument for the fact that these agencies have taken serious cuts over many years and if we’re going to hit them this year with the Draconian-style cuts that I think some people would have us hit them with, then we’re at risk at this point of doing real harm. Some of these people that we’re talking about, if they sustain these type of cuts – and I’m not a dramatic person – people die. We’re putting our corrections workers at risk. We’re putting child welfare workers at risk. And then again, if you care about teachers and the teacher pay raise, I don’t know how you fund that without looking at some types of new revenue.
If stating directly what ongoing cuts mean to those we serve means we have peddled doubt and fear, then I don’t know what to tell you. Then again, he’s not a dramatic person, and he thinks people are going to die if we don’t do something different.
2:40 If the agency known as the State Department of Education and if the Education Establishment in general would start coming with more solutions to the problem versus just the answer being solely we need more money, because there are opportunities to realize efficiencies within the common education universe. The problem is that the Education Establishment really is fixated on just maintaining the status quo, which is sick and really disgusting and it doesn’t benefit the children in this state, so enough of that already.
That’s some weird phrasing: the agency known as the State Department of Education. How else would they be known? And of course, there’s the red meat for his base: the Education Establishment.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m fixated on improving the education my district provides our 14,300 students. Cutting $5,000,000 from our budget last year and over 100 support, teaching, and administrative positions doesn’t make that easy. Losing almost $1.3 million in the second half of this fiscal year doesn’t either. School funding is being held hostage by someone who shows no evidence that he can reverse trend behavior.
And that is really disgusting.
3:20 What we are doing is not sustainable. It’s not, and we need to figure out – the collective we – how we want to approach that. I – again, if anybody things the budget that I pushed out this year is the budget that I wanted to push out – it’s just not true, but it was the reality that we faced in order to try to invest in our state and try to avoid doing real harm in areas where – I can tell you, it was a guiding principle. The governor has told me, the last two years for sure, please try to protect areas, Preston, where people die, or real harm occurs, and that’s what I’ve tried to do.
This entire scenario reminds me of a scene in The Hunt for Red October. A Russian admiral, played by Sean Connery, wants to defect to America and bring his big, bad new submarine with him. He’s being chased by another Russian submarine, which fires a torpedo. Connery’s sub outmaneuvers the other one, and the torpedo tracks towards the one that fired it.
One of the Russians turns to the ship’s captain and says, “You arrogant ass; you’ve killed us!”
As with the torpedo movie, we’ve taken the safety features off our budget. We’ve all but eliminated taxes on horizontal drilling. We give money away by the bucket to corporations that fail to invest it back into our state. We keep cutting taxes and then desperately trying to steer out of the way of disaster.
And every time we do this, someone in the Education Establishment will say how grateful we are that we were held flat, as opposed to facing more cuts.
I’m over that.
And if you want a list of some of the suggestions we’ve made over the years, check out Rob Miller’s blog post from today. He’s not thrilled with Mr. Doerflinger either.
During a speech to the Tulsa Republican Club Friday, State Finance Secretary Preston Doerflinger remarked that the Oklahoma state government cannot continue to function at anything close to current levels without new revenue, calling the state’s current budgeting path “not sustainable.”
Duh, ya think!
Thank you, Preston Obvious.
Rob discusses several funding and policy solutions we have proposed for years. We’re not beholden to the status quo. I would love to change many things about how we pay for education and how we provide it.
What the Education Establishment can’t do is fix the state budget. Hopefully someone can.
And so it starts…
A year ago at this time, we were just beginning to learn the depths of our state’s revenue failure. The state had declared a revenue failure, which began a series of cuts for school districts everywhere. It’s not just that we knew we’d have less money for the following school year; no, we had to make cuts right away.
I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Today, superintendents around Oklahoma had a serious sense of déjà vu.
In case you can’t read the image, it’s a memo from Superintendent Hofmeister letting us know of a funding shortfall (which is different than a revenue failure). Here’s the key part:
Based on the December revenue collections, the 1017 Fund is approximately $11.7 million or 3.5 percent below the estimate. The total January deposits are approximately $9.7 million short of the funds needed to make the scheduled payment in full.
At this time, for payment purposes, instead of reallocating State Aid Allocations statewide, we will reduce the percentage of payment based on available cash.
- For Financial Support of Schools (State Aid formula funding), we are only able to pay 8.47 percentthis month instead of the scheduled 9 percent (a 0.53 percent payment reduction).
- The January accumulated percentageof the latest allocation is 53.47 percent.
- To calculate your state aid payment, multiply the accumulated percentage by the most recent allocation and then subtract the amount paid to date. The result is the amount of payment for each month.
- The effective date for the January payment remains Thursday, January 12, 2017.
- At this time, all other line items continue to be paid at the scheduled accumulated percentage.
We will continue to look at each month’s cash revenue and re-evaluate our course of action on a monthly basis.
School districts receive 11 monthly state aid payments. They are uneven. There is no July payment. The August payment is eight percent of the overall state aid. September and May are ten percent. The other months are nine percent.
Wait, that’s a lot of numerical verbiage. Let me try it in a table.
| Month | % of State Aid Received | Month | % of State Aid Received |
| July | 0% | January | 9% |
| August | 8% | February | 9% |
| September | 10% | March | 9% |
| October | 9% | April | 9% |
| November | 9% | May | 10% |
| December | 9% | June | 9% |
For the first six months of this fiscal year, we received the payments we expected to receive. The memo today tells us our January payment will be short.
It will be on time, but it will be short. The shortage will be different for each district, but our payment will be about $281,000 less than we were expecting.
And that’s just January. We don’t know if this fund will be short again next month, or maybe every month for the rest of the fiscal year.
And we don’t know about other funds.
And we don’t know if the state will declare revenue failure again this year.
What I know is that we cut over $5 million from our budget this year and elimnated about 100 jobs. Yet somehow, we’re still taking on water.
That’s why I hate the question, “How can school districts save money?” We’re already doing that. And the people who work for us are busy exploring their options.
At the semester, we had a teacher leave us to take a job in a correctional facility. That’s the most re-tweeted tweet I’ve ever tweeted. Apparently that struck a nerve with people. It did with me. That’s why I tweeted it.
It also struck a nerve when the editorial writers at the Oklahoman tried to make sense of Rep. Kevin Calvey’s press release about Superintendent Hofmeister’s budget request. Their synthesis only made things worse.
Bureaucrats seldom volunteer to embrace efficiency and often resort to doomsday rhetoric when changes to the status quo are proposed. The problems noted with the Department of Education’s budget request won’t be unique among state agencies.
Whether we volunteered for it or not, whether we’re embracing it or not, we’re becoming more efficient. As for the doomsday rhetoric, I’ll refer you to today’s memo and to the teacher leaving us for a correctional facility.
Teachers want raises. They also want to have manageable class sizes. Oh, and they want current instructional materials. Technology that works would be nice too. It’s the little things.
Today, I don’t feel like blaming anyone. I don’t feel like calling out particular politicians who I think have contributed to a climate in which all functions of state government are suffering.
I also don’t feel like being told we need to be more efficient.
A few legislators get it.
A few isn’t enough. Today, we bleed a little more. Next month? I don’t want to think about that yet. I’m just waiting on the weather to possibly give us another four-day week.
One way or another, we have to make ends meet, right?
Bring on 2017!
Year end recaps are usually trite and self-serving, so why should mine be any different? I won’t belabor the huge loss of talent that we’ve seen this year. Sure, we’ve seen the passing of Prince, Alan Rickman, John Glenn, Muhammad Ali, Gene Wilder, Sharon Jones, David Bowie, and even the guy who played Schneider on One Day at a Time. We even had three major celebrity losses (George Michael, Carrie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds) in the last week!
That’s not the talent I mean. Besides, CNN says we need to get over ourselves because it’s not even the worst year in recent memory for celebrity deaths. They have numbers and everything.
I’m talking about the ongoing talent loss in public education. Year after year, we continue to teach more students with fewer teachers. Of the teachers we have, more and more of them have entered the profession through the emergency certification route.
Five years ago, Oklahoma granted a grand total of 32 emergency certificates. Halfway through the current school year, we already have 1,082. Teachers are leaving the profession because they see a better pathway for supporting their families somewhere else. Worse yet, we don’t have very many college students picking the profession to begin with.
We continue to have budget problems. Our Legislature had to fix a $610 million budget hole in Fiscal Year 2016 (2015-16). They had a $1.3 BILLION shortfall in FY 17. As they set to work on the FY 18 budget, they will begin with an $870 million deficit.
Knowing that any prospect of significant teacher raises died November 8th with the defeat of SQ 779, teachers who have options will spend the spring looking elsewhere for opportunities. Some will look to other careers. Some will look to other states.
The exodus isn’t beginning because of the election. It’s continuing. It may even be accelerating. Even Texas newspapers are noticing. The Dallas Morning News piggybacked on a Tulsa World article in August about one such move: LeAnna Snyder moving from Tulsa to Grand Prairie for a $20,000 raise. She cited the fact that her own children are about to enter college and she just had to do more for them. It’s more than the money, though:
“Yes, I’m getting a raise of almost $20,000 — and that’s a big help to my family, especially with two kids about to be in college. But it’s not just salary,” said Snyder. “It’s retirement, it’s class size, it’s supplies. It’s about kindness and respect. When you walk into that building in Texas, it’s clean, it’s not old, it’s sharp-looking. It felt safe.”
It’s not just Texas, either. Snyder could have crossed the Kansas or Arkansas borders for raises as well.
Tulsa World
In fact, all the states that border Oklahoma have higher average salaries than we do.
Tulsa World
We still have legislators and policy groups who dispute those figures. We even have teachers who do. Remember that when you see an average teacher’s salary figure, though, that you’re looking at salary, insurance, and retirement – not just taxable income. Also remember that those are the same numbers used for other states.
State support for public education has been trending downward for a long time. According to data from the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability (OEQA), from FY 2000 to FY 2015, the state share of school funding dropped from 57.3% to 47.7%.
| Fiscal Year | Local Share | State Share | Federal Share |
| 2015 | 40.8% | 47.7% | 11.6% |
| 2010* | 36.1% | 46.5% | 17.4% |
| 2005 | 34.1% | 52.2% | 13.8% |
| 2000 | 32.8% | 57.3% | 10.0% |
*In 2010, federal stimulus funds supplemented state aid.
Another way to look at this is to place state funding for education side-by-side with public school enrollment growth, as KOSU has done. For FY 08, the Legislature appropriated $2.53 billion for common education. The amount dropped the next three years and then increased the following three years before dropping again this year.
KOSU
As it stands, funding is $100 million lower than it was eight years ago, but enrollment is nearly 50,000 students higher. It’s also worth mentioning that 2016 dollars have less buying power than 2008 dollars. Fortunately, the Oklahoma Policy Institute has calculated the extent of Oklahoma’s per pupil cuts, adjusting for inflation.
Per pupil state funding in Oklahoma is down nearly a quarter since 2008. That’s the worst figure in the country. Sure, we’ve seen a downturn in energy sector of our economy, but it hasn’t hit all the states that produce oil and gas as hard as it has hit us.
North Dakota is another oil producing state, and they lead the nation in per pupil funding increases. They’re even adding to their equivalent of our Rainy Day Fund as we have all but shaken the last coin from our piggy bank. I don’t want to model everything we do after North Dakota – they’ve had a pretty rough time the last few months with DAPL, you know – I just want to live in a state with sound fiscal planning. And I don’t want to move.
Part of our state’s problem is that we give too many tax breaks without getting anything in return. The 2016 version of the Legislature fought this travesty head on – by eliminating the Oklahoma Earned Income Credit. This was, in essence, a tax increase on the state’s poorest citizens. If that sounds familiar, it’s because the same politicians used that reasoning for opposing the penny sales tax.
For more than a decade, we’ve seen declining tax revenues in Oklahoma. Some of this is due to policy decisions; some is due to oil prices. Due to cuts to income taxes alone, the state has lost over $1 billion in revenue since 2008. I know, you want to keep more of what you earn. So do I. We’re not the ones benefitting from these tax cuts, however.
If you’re making what an average school teacher in Oklahoma makes, your cut was about $29. Actually, it was less. Your taxable income is less than the $47,500 listed in that table.
Pretty much every state agency has seen funding cuts during the current cycle of budget woes. Meanwhile, working Oklahomans haven’t seen game changing tax breaks.
Oil companies have, though. We continue giving tax breaks all over the place to them, though.
International Business Times
Similar to what we’ve done in Oklahoma, North Dakota has reduced property and income tax rates. They’ve continued to tax drilling, though.
Apparently, we’re going to dig out of this hole by taxing haircuts, tattoos, and cigarettes. Twice, in fact, since the end of the legislative session in May, I’ve met with Republican legislators who blame Democrats for not supporting a cigarette tax proposal that they think would have raised $150 million annually. I reminded both that Republicans have veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate, and that they also hold the governor’s mansion.
After November 8th, Republicans now hold even wider margins in both chambers of the Legislature. They have a 75-26 advantage in the House and a 42-6 gap in the Senate. Republican unity would seem to be a bigger issue than courting Democrats to their side. Hopefully, many of the newly elected legislators will be as education friendly as they’ve sounded.
Of course, we also have distractions. Days before the election, the state superintendent was indicted for alleged violations of state campaign laws. Interestingly, the charges were filed at the end of absentee ballot voting and at the beginning of early voting. Do I think that made a difference?
| Absentee | Early Voting | Election Day | Total | |
| Yes | 52,989 | 63,895 | 466,545 | 583,429 |
| No | 46,147 | 86,400 | 721,026 | 853,573 |
Yeah, I think it made a difference. Before the indictment, Yes on 779 had a slim margin. After the indictment, it was No in a landslide. Are the charges against Superintendent Hofmeister valid? I’m not a lawyer or a judge. Out of thousands of pages of evidence that were reviewed, we’ve only seen a 32 page complaint by the district attorney’s office. We haven’t seen or heard defense arguments yet. A lot can happen between here and there. The timing (on allegations that were 17 months old) definitely stung, though.
We also have the distraction of what appears to be a hush hush settlement orchestrated by the former Speaker of the House. In case you’ve missed the drama over the last couple of weeks, I’ll let the Oklahoman sum it up for you:
A fired legislative assistant and her attorneys were secretly paid $44,500 in state funds in November to settle her sexual harassment complaint against a state representative from Tulsa, records show.
Hollie Anne Bishop, 28, complained Rep. Dan Kirby, 58, began sexually harassing her shortly after she started working for him in January 2015. She complained she was fired without explanation on Nov. 20, 2015, in retaliation for reporting the harassment.
She accepted a $28,414.20 payment, online records show. Her Edmond attorneys accepted a $16,085.80 payment.
The payments appear to have come from taxpayer funds meant to operate the state House of Representatives. The payments were made Nov. 22 after Kirby, a Republican, won re-election, the records show.
Keep in mind that while education and every other function of state government saw a cut in funding, the Legislature increased its own operational budget by 183% for FY 17. Surely this isn’t why, is it?
It’s also worth noting that Kirby won his re-election on November 8th –two weeks before the settlement was paid. Is that timing also fishy? Of course it is.
Since the revelation of this settlement before Christmas, Kirby has resigned, we have learned that outgoing Speaker Jeff Hickman was instrumental in lining up the settlement, Kirby has rescinded his resignation, and that new Speaker Charles McCall wants to investigate the whole thing.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Scott Pruitt is headed to the Trump administration, the incoming Secretary of Education does not appear to have ever set foot in a public school, and – oh yeah! – we still have nearly a billion dollar hole to fill.
I don’t envy the task our legislators have. Some who are well-meaning engage with public education advocates on social media quite effectively. Others shut down quickly and lament that they are tired of hearing us complain without offering any solutions. I have two things to say to that:
- You ran for office. Aren’t you supposed to have some ideas?
- We’ve been giving you our ideas for the last several years now. Do we need to list them again?
In the past few years, the Legislature has listened to us on non-revenue issues. They added parents to the third-grade reading committee. They authorized changes to A-F Report Cards. They passed new academic standards. They eliminated End of Instruction tests and simplified teacher evaluations too. Year after year, they’ve even turned back voucher bills.
I know that most of our legislators listen to us. We just can’t seem to get anywhere with funding.
In spite of all of this, I’m going to remain hopeful.
We have 700,000 public education students to teach in this state. More than 14,000 of those are in my district alone. I even still have one in my household. Public education continues to be a bargain for taxpayers and a building block for citizenship. In spite of the challenges – both for funding and respect – I see great things every day in our schools. Even the teachers who are looking for an exit come to work and try to make an impact every day.
We have new and returning legislators who need to continue hearing from us. They need to know what our struggles look like. They need to see faces. They need to hear our opinions about everything from funding to vouchers to accountability. We owe them that. We should call them, and they should call us.
2016 is gone, and good riddance to it. Bring on 2017, come what may.
They came, they saw, they puked
In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, Oklahoma has faced budget shortfalls each of the last three years, and they just keep getting bigger. This has created tension at our Capitol – you know the one getting the $245 million in repairs.
That’s not what this post is about. I’m glad the Capitol is being restored. Here’s what Governor Fallin said in her state of the state address back in 2014:
In fact, this building has become a safety hazard. We are doing a great disservice to our state and its citizens by allowing the Capitol to crumble around us.
The exterior is falling apart, to the point where we must actually worry about state employees and visitors – including teachers and students on field trips – being hit by falling pieces of the façade.
The yellow barriers outside are an eyesore and an embarrassment.
The electrical system is dangerously outdated.
And guys, the water stains you’ve seen on some of the walls downstairs? I have bad news for you. That’s not just water.
Raw sewage is literally leaking into our basement. On “good” days, our visitors and employees can only see the disrepair. On bad days, they can smell it.
Based on a Fox 25 story from last week, some of those same terms could be appropriate in describing the state’s budget negotiations process. As Phil Cross explains:
Documents obtained by FOX 25 shed new light on the difficulties of filling the $1.3 billion hole in the state’s budget. They reveal the governor’s office began talking about the budget long before the session kicked off. Doerflinger said while formal negotiations did not start until 2016, the talks started shortly after the 2015 legislative session closed.
Emails from the governor’s staff showed the session began with optimism. Even when House Minority Leader Scott Inman (D-Del City) told the Tulsa World there was no chance for a teacher pay raise during the session, the Governor’s Chief of Staff Denise Northrup wrote “challenge accepted…gov remember this for the meeting with Inman soon.”
Ultimately though, no teacher pay raise happened in the session. By May, a staff member for the governor’s office wrote, “Not very grateful,” in an email to Northrup containing the statement of Oklahoma State School Board Association on the end of the session saying schools would continue to struggle under the budget agreement. Northrup replied, “jerks.”
I don’t find much of this surprising. The governor’s staff didn’t like the push back they received to their budget ideas. And maybe they were upset that Inman didn’t think their ideas would produce a teacher raise, but show me where he was wrong.
Remember, the Republican party can pass any piece of legislation they wanted to without a single Democrat voting for it. If the governor vetoed it, they could override her, again, without a single Democrat supporting them. That’s called a supermajority. Governor Fallin has had that luxury for the six years she’s held the office. It’s a luxury Fallin expects to retain for her last two years as governor as well.
There’s more:
“In this budget, there are things that you don’t like,” Doerflinger said, “and in this case that was one that made my stomach church but at the end of the day the governor has to make a decision as to whether all the other things that were accomplished in this budget.”
The stomach churning was not confined to Doerflinger’s office. Upstairs, in the governor’s office Northrup looked at the final agreement which included an addition that was never part of any negotiation. She simply wrote, “puke.”
I love this kind of insight. Knowing that there would be no budget deal otherwise, the governor’s office accepted something they didn’t want. It made them want to puke.
I couldn’t bring myself to use a Linda Blair gif.
Yet when the OSSBA feels the same way, they’re jerks, right? Right.
During the last six years, I can’t even count the number of financial decisions our state has made that have made me feel that way. Just for fun, though, here are a few:
In 2012, Oklahoma voters approved SQ 766, which now costs the state tens of millions of dollars annually in property tax collections. This impacts our cities and our schools, and it deepens the budget deficits we face in this state. It benefits large corporations, most notably AT&T. The measure passed 65% to 35%, because all we heard was “tax cut.” Never mind that it doesn’t help most of us.
In 2014, the Legislature passed an income tax cut that continued to cut into state revenue. It is likely that the legislation responsible for dropping the tax rate in Oklahoma to 5 percent this year will cause it to fall even further in 2018.
In 2015, the Legislature passed HB 2244, which threw motor vehicle tax collections into a spin that created huge imbalances in state aid to school districts. On top of that, the Oklahoma Tax Commission misinterpreted the Legislature’s intent for how those collections should be distributed. A judge’s decision against the OTC now means that some corrective action will be taken, which will impact districts’ budget planning.
In 2016, school districts throughout the state faced cut after cut after cut, but only once half the year had already passed. Then during the summer, the same people who wanted to puke because of all the jerks announced that they had accidentally cut $141 million too much from state agencies. They even tried re-branding it a surplus and attempted to talk legislators into having a special session (like the one they worked to avoid in May by holding their nose and accepting an imperfect product).
Meanwhile, the governor’s biggest cheerleaders (besides Oklahoma’s energy industry) – the editorialists at the Oklahoman and the think tank double-speakers at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs – spent the year alternating between trying to convince teachers that they were actually making good money and contriving strategies to use one-time funds (such as the surplus that wasn’t) to fund raises that wouldn’t be sustainable. One of the OCPA guys even suggested that we should illegally spend bond money to pay salaries. If he thinks that idea will float, then he’s probably going to buy OU’s Tuscan monastery.
Making the burn of bad decisions worse, North Dakota has managed the spoils of their energy industry and created a real budget surplus. That could have been Oklahoma.
Yeah, I still want to puke.
We vote in nine days. Maybe you’re still on the fence about SQ 779 – the penny sales tax that would generate raises of at least $5,000 for teachers. Or maybe you’ve been reading propaganda that says more than half the money will go to higher education. That’s a lie. No matter how many times you read it on the Internet, it’s still a lie. If you want to read the legal language and get back to me, feel free.
If the people who are running things at the Capitol make you want to puke, you still have a chance to support pro-education candidates. A few changes here and there, and our collective stomachs might rest a little better.
That’s about it for things that make me want to puke – well, as long as I don’t get started on the Halloween overtime that is our presidential election.
Time to get woke (as the kids are saying)
Here we are, 23 days away from Election Day, and two things are still true.
Ok, well, not those two things. I am rooting for the Cubs in the playoffs right now, but as for the other, I prefer something that isn’t so mass produced – maybe even something made in Oklahoma.
No, the two things that are still true are (1) that we still have a massive teacher shortage, and (2) that many teachers in Oklahoma qualify for government assistance programs, such as WIC and Sooner Care.
This election will be critical, but at the top of the ballot, we have two figures whose personalities turn people off in droves. I won’t get into that. We must look past that and vote anyway. We have several state questions that are important, and dozens of competitive legislative races. Unfortunately, there are no statewide office holders on the ballot this time around.
One thing that really hit home for me this week was when a friend asked me to guest lecture in his class for pre-service teacher candidates at Oklahoma State University. I also had the chance to speak to a broader group before the class discussion.
I really didn’t know what to expect when I met with America’s Brightest Orange ™. We had some great comments and conversations about the state of public schools in our state. In both talks, though, I had to answer a question, somewhere along the lines of, “After I graduate, why should I stay in Oklahoma?”
My answer, as I was mindful of the fact that this during work hours, was that if SQ 779 passed, or if the our elected leaders could find a meaningful way to give raises to teachers, that there are a bunch of reasons to stay. (I also told them that if they choose to stay in Oklahoma, they should choose Mid-Del. Don’t judge. You’d have promoted your own district as well.)
I also told them that if the state can’t find a way to raise teacher salaries before they graduate, then I can’t in good conscience market the state of Oklahoma to them. I love it here. I’m a fourth generation Oklahoman and I’ve lived here my whole life. My own children are looking elsewhere, though.
We also talked about the lack of students entering the profession in the traditional way, through the teacher prep programs at our colleges and universities.
I know some great teachers who started their careers with alternative certification. I even know some teachers with emergency certification who work out just fine. Over the years, though, it’s the teachers who went to college with the intent to become teachers who tend to work out most reliably and stay with us the longest.
I’ve written it many times, but once you sign to come to work for me, I don’t care what pathway you took into the profession. Our job is to support you and help you become a rock star teacher. With the people I have around me in Mid-Del who are geared to support just that, it’s much easier to make the case of why you should come work for us than why you should stay in Oklahoma.
I didn’t say it directly on Thursday, but I support SQ 779 – the penny sales tax. I tire of the argument that we’re letting the Legislature (and governor) off the hook for failing to do their jobs. The truth is that the bigger the margin of victory, the more it will be seen as a reprimand. We’re calling out our elected leaders.
They’ve spent the last six years with one party control of the government, yet per pupil state aid for schools has steadily declined. The first four of those years, they missed an opportunity to help all core state services while oil prices were at historically high levels.
The last two years, they’ve built flimsy budgets on faulty estimates. This led to a massive revenue shortfall last year, and the state miscalculated that too. This fiscal year, the state continues to fail to meet revenue collection estimates. That means we’ll likely see another revenue failure declaration and more budget cuts – after the election, of course.
Voting for SQ 779 is important because our various branches of government can’t agree on (a) how to fund public education adequately, or (b) just how much money they’re working with in the first place. These are also reasons why we must send some different people to the Capitol.
As much as I want to, I won’t specifically endorse any candidates for November’s election. Yes, it’s my personal blog, and I’m on my own time. I have every right to do what I want, but I’m increasingly aware of the fact that I need to have good working relationships with whoever voters send to 23rd and Lincoln.
That said, if you want to educate yourself about many of the races, my friend at Blue Cereal Education has some great candidate comparison. Whenever possible, he lets candidates’ own words do the talking. In particular, I find his information on House Districts 69 and 93, and Senate Districts 33 and 37 particularly compelling.
Educating yourself about candidates is a moral imperative. According to a Sooner Poll survey cited in the Oklahoman today, teachers feel quite underappreciated.
A vast majority of public school teachers across the state have an unfavorable opinion of the state Legislature — 81 percent, according to SoonerPoll — which has some teachers seeing similarities between this year and 2014.
In unrelated news, puppies are cute.
If we’re all really that frustrated, then we need to get off of our butts on Election Day and do something about it. The people who still want to wreck public education keep finding new angles.
I’m not making this up. Yes, the OCPA, which refutes that climate change is even a thing, now wants us all to support school choice in order to help the environment.
That reminds me, as long as you’re voting on November 8th, you should probably take a good hard look at SQ 790. Supporters claim that the intent is to allow us to move the 10 Commandments statue back to the Capitol. The fact that it currently sits in front of the OCPA building speaks volumes though. It’s really a back door for spending state money on religious education. I’ll be voting no on that one.
Again, if you’re a parent, educator, or future teacher, you need to vote. You need to vote in numbers that exceed the averages for other groups of people.
Public schools educate 90 percent of Oklahoma’s children. If we have any chance of continuing to serve them effectively, we can’t sit this one out.
Ignore the presidential election if you must. Just be informed and make smart choices.
Halfway Nowhere
In case you missed it while following the non-stop coverage of Donald Trump’s obscenities and vitriol, our governor issued an official proclamation this week for the state’s oil and gas industry.
I get it. She finally realizes that handing the energy producers an endless stream of tax cuts and credits has not helped the state’s economy, and she has one hope left. Pray.
I’m all for prayer. Residents from our state celebrate many faiths and worship in a variety of ways. Sure, her proclamation ignores many of these people and most of the faiths, but that’s ok. We’re Oklahoma. We don’t need diversity, right?
Fine, the exclusivity of her proclamation bothers me. So does the fact that under her leadership for the last six years, our state’s economy has continually worsened. Prayer and faith are great things, but they’re no substitute for a functioning government. Without a plan for how our state can diversify the economy or properly fund core state services, no amount of prayer is going to change the direction we are going.
I’m going to assume that our state leaders – along with the majority of Oklahomans – have been praying for all sorts of prosperity prior to now. That’s not what’s we’re missing. If our governor and Legislature had been doing their jobs during the last six years, maybe we wouldn’t be in a cycle of budget holes that worsen each year.
Prayer doesn’t change the fact that our leaders are patching problems with one-time money and taxes disguised as fees. Faith in God does not excuse us from the need to understand math. If you lower taxes, you have less money to fund schools, health care, roads, bridges, foster care, and corrections.
After six years with one party leading everything in the state – you’d think they could work together to make Oklahoma great again more prosperous. They haven’t. That’s why SQ 779 – the penny sales tax – had to happen. Nothing else was. Oh, those of us who support public education have been praying aplenty – for anything that would stem the tide of teachers leaving the state and the profession.
Right now there aren’t enough monestaries in Tuscany to make some of our teachers stick around. Maybe the governor’s next proclamation will be to ask for a day of prayer for the future of our schools. I’m not holding my breath.
Instead, I’m planning. I’ll be voting in less than a month for SQ 779 and for some new faces at the Capitol. November 8 can’t come soon enough.
okeducationtruths 