Countdown: 14 Days

After a months-long blogging hiatus, I wrote a little piece last night about the looming work-stoppage. I gave it a simplistic title, Countdown: 15 Days. The nomenclature is catchy, I see.

Please understand, friends, that this doesn’t mean I’ll be writing a daily post until this is over.

Tonight, I don’t want to focus on the money. That’s important, but it’s only a part of the conversation. I want to go back about exactly six years.

The State Board of Education was to hold an open meeting to hear public comments on the proposed rules for the first round of A-F Report Cards. The date was Monday, March 19, 2012.

I wasn’t there, but then again, neither was the State Board of Education. Counsel for the State Board of Education was there in their place. Fortunately, Claudia Swisher wrote about the day in one of her first blog posts:

The Board Room was packed. Lisa Enders, the General Council, chaired the meeting. No Board members were present, but Enders assured us the Board will get the video and all the written responses before their next meeting…NEXT week.

This was typical of how educators were treated during the administration of the previous state superintendent. Somebody would make a perfunctory effort to gather input from stakeholders, even some actual educators. Then, from what I have gathered, that input was shoved into a file cabinet, lit aflame, and hurtled from the top of Mt. Scott.

This isn’t smart people. We’re pretty much in a perpetual burn ban. It would be better to hide those good ideas and meaningful concerns in a warehouse, ala Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Claudia went on to note concerns expressed by legislators, community leaders, educators, and parents. While all of those concerns were ignored, this moment was the impetus for several years of effective – if often disorganized – activism in the #oklaed community.

Inspired by Claudia’s writing, I started blogging. So did Rob Miller, and countless other pro-public education advocates. Over the next few years, we had moments. We had victories. Some were in the legislative process. Some were at the ballot box.

Policy-wise, we still have to deal with some reforms that don’t make sense to educators and that keep us from truly focusing on children. I shudder to think of all the state testing pep rallies that will have to be rescheduled because of the work-stoppage.

Still, other than with funding, we’re in a better place than we were in 2012. I’ll point to two specific moments that mattered. For both, I’ll point to blog posts I wrote in 2014 and then explain how they’re relevant now.

In May 2014, the biggest battle we were facing was to let parents have a say in whether or not their third graders would be retained because of one test on a single day. The Oklahoman and the Tulsa World chimed in on it frequently. Here’s what happened:

The House and Senate overwhelmingly passed HB 2625, adding parents to the retention/promotion committees. Fallin vetoed it. The House and Senate took about three seconds to override her veto. They didn’t even debate it.

This afternoon, both chambers of the Oklahoma Legislature voted to override Governor Fallin’s veto of HB 2625, which amends the Reading Sufficiency Act.  The vote in the House was 79-17. In the Senate it was 45-2.

Many parents and educators lobbied for today’s action, even after Fallin waited until nearly midnight to officially notify the House of the veto she had announced hours earlier at a press conference. In the end, only a few changed their votes. Before the veto, the combined tally had been 132-7 in favor of the bill. Today, it was 124-19. Maybe the governor, the state superintendent, and their friends at the Oklahoman and OCPA can take solace in the fact that they nearly tripled their vote count from before.

The state superintendent also called the veto override “a pathetic and outrageous step back.” We’ll get to her in a minute.

Passing this bill took courage from quite a few legislators – none more than Rep. Katie Henke. It also took relentless contact from educators and parents who wanted to see the bill passed. This was the first time (in my career) that we have seen the impact we can have when the pro-public education voices of Oklahoma unite.

A month later, we sweetened the pot, when voters relegated the state superintendent to a third-place finish in her own primary. Here’s my closing thought from the night that happened.

It started when we just couldn’t contain ourselves. Our murmurs grew into an eruption. We would not be silenced. We demanded respect.

I would say that was the highlight, so far, of how we can use our collective voices to change the narrative. Sure, there were some legislative seats flipped in 2016, but nothing that has come close to these two moments.

My question to you is what are you willing to do to make sure we’re not ignored this time? Are you willing to call, email, and text your legislators? Are you willing to point out that a plan to plan really isn’t a plan? Are you willing to storm the Capitol, relentlessly, from April 2 onward, and indefinitely?

There are some in the Legislature, as well as many in the cheap seats who doubt your resolve. Policies come and go. We don’t have to fight corporate interests to lobby for sensible change in that arena. Money is a different beast altogether.

As far as I can tell, two things are still true:

1. Oklahoma’s educators will do anything for their students.
2. We can all band together when we need to.

I hope I’m right.