Acting leader outlines walkout plan

The acting superintendent of Oklahoma’s largest school district said Thursday she’s prepared to close schools “indefinitely” if teachers walk off the job April 2.

Rebecca Kaye, however, said it will be “difficult” to make up the time missed if schools are closed for more than four days — the amount of extra time built into the district calendar.

“At a certain point we’ll have to adjust the calendar to continue going to school into June, so we may be on a true continuous calendar for next year,” Kaye said Thursday during a news conference at Northeast Academy.

“And we are prepared to do that because there is nothing more critical right now for us than making sure that we create conditions so that we can retain great teachers in our city and in our state.”

The last day of school for students is May 29. By law, students are required to receive 180 days or 1,080 hours of instruction.

While the district can add time to the end of the day to account for days five through nine of a walkout, it would take a calendar adjustment approved by the school board to make up any additional days missed.

The Oklahoma Education Association, the

state’s largest teachers union, has called for an April 2 teacher walkout if lawmakers don’t approve more than $800 million in new funding this fiscal year, which includes raises for teachers and school staff, and would cost more than $1.4 billion in year three of the plan.

Kaye called on legislators to take action because 45,000 students in the Oklahoma City district “deserve better than what they’ve been getting.”

“What I hear from parents more than anything is that they want our state leaders to take action to avoid this from happening,” she said. “Teachers don’t want to walk out. Teachers just want to be paid fairly and they don’t want to have a second job in order to take care of their families or to have to consider moving to Texas.”

About 63 percent of 771 teachers and other certified employees polled by the district said they are prepared to “remain on walkout” for 10 days or longer.

Kaye said district leaders are prepared to support teachers “in whatever it is that they feel like is necessary.”

“It’s really hard to get to a place where putting students first means that we can’t have school,”

she said. “It’s hard to have to respond to a situation like that, but we don’t know what else to do.”

Kaye said the district will deliver meals by bus during a walkout. She said the buses will act as “rolling feeding sites” for students, many of whom receive three meals a day plus a snack at school.

“The buses will pick up meals that are made by our school nutrition staff, take them to designated locations where kids and families will be able to come and get the meals, then (the buses) will go pick up some more and go to another site,” she said.

Kaye said the district is working with community partners and faith-based organizations to connect families with services and resources, including child care, during the walkout.

New school board member Jace Kirk said children are “at the heart of this discussion.”

“We don’t want our kids to suffer during this,” he said. “We want to do anything we can to make sure they’re taken care of.”

Kirk is assistant director of Faith Works of the Inner City, a nonprofit ministry designed to meet the educational, spiritual and physical needs of inner-city children and their families, according to the Faith Works website.

The ministry partners with Shidler Elementary School in the Oklahoma

City district and the Shidler-Wheeler community to establish educational and after-school programs, teen and adult work programs, and summer camps.