YOUR VIEWS
Throwing money
The teachers have a raise. No one would argue they and public employees don’t need a raise. A lot of numbers have been thrown around about Oklahoma being at the bottom of the pile for teacher pay. OK, we’ve improved that issue, but one of the numbers folks aren’t talking about is the grade Oklahoma gets for the educational level of our kids. Are we taking money from other services for “mediocre” teachers who haven’t been doing that good a job, and are we under the impression that this money will change the level of education our kids get? Is how well the teachers in Oklahoma teach linked to their paycheck? Shall we expect improvements in the educational output, since we’ve added more to that paycheck? And if we get that improvement, does that mean they were just “holding out” on the kids because they weren’t paid as much as Kansas, Arkansas or Missouri? If so, are those really the teachers you want in your classrooms?
Everyone knows the paycheck isn’t the only answer. My question is who’s going to walk out for school consolidations? This is just throwing money at the loudest voices. Until they state does a positive overhaul, we will still be at the bottom.
They deserve better
Congratulations to all Oklahoma teachers for trying to better the education of all students in the state. They all deserve better than they have been getting. The state must learn to spend money where it counts — the youth, our future.
Darrell S. Russell, Asheville, N.C.
Tie teachers to legislative pay
It’s extremely frustrating to me that legislators have waited so long to address education, teacher pay and state worker pay. Our teachers have been told by some legislators that they should be in the classroom. Some have said they voted against the pay raise because they had not had a chance to read the bill. Our legislators should do their jobs in a timely manner. They would then have sufficient time to read bills and be informed to vote. Fully fund education in Oklahoma. Give our teachers incentive to stay here. If you truly care about state workers and teachers, after you bring their income up to a living wage, tie their cost-ofliving increases to the cost-of-living increases of legislators.
Jim Ballard, Norman
Failed us again
Once again our politicians have failed us. Instead of looking for waste, corruption and unnecessary expenditures, they have opted to raise taxes in order to increase teacher salaries. With regard to the teachers walking off the job, I started working for a salary when I was 12 and “retired” when I was 68. I would have been fired had I walked off any of the jobs I had!
Edward Little, Oklahoma City
What am I paying for?
According to my ad valorem tax 2017 statement, I contribute approximately $2,200 to Oklahoma County Schools, with the majority going to the Oklahoma City Public School System. Will I get a rebate on my ad valorem taxes for the time the OCPS is closed due to the strike? Seems the OCPS school board surveyed all its constituent groups except one regarding their decision to support the walkout: the taxpayers who fund their schools! When is the next OCPS bond election?
Gary Walker, Oklahoma City
Will sanity prevail?
Shere Barabasz, Moore
I’ve read as many of the articles, letters and opinions about the school funding crisis as I can. There has been a dearth of input on curbing costs and eliminating duplication and waste. I bet almost every state employee, teacher, and probably support staff, could point out areas or instances of waste and excess in their immediate operations. Especially if they could do so without fear of reprisal.
I’m mystified that teachers don’t join in the call to consolidate the obviously bloated administration cost caused in great part by the excessive number of school districts. Those excess costs directly affect available funds for teachers and classrooms. When you see the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust spending on programs that probably should be under the purview of the Department of Health (which has a funding crisis of its own), and the School Land Commission circling the wagons to protect its ever-growing
nest egg, it’s easy to become numb to the calls of “more, more, more.”
I remain hopeful, but not convinced, that fiscal sanity will somehow prevail. Eventually.
Joe Dunaway, Oklahoma City
Resting on their laurels
House Bill 1017 was landmark legislation, and it helped bolster education funding to respective levels in Oklahoma. The problem is that it was passed in 1990, and throughout the subsequent 28 years the effects have been not only lauded, but looked at by legislators as enough change to last almost three decades with nothing to provide the inflation-adjusted effects of this decades-old law. Here is yet another piece of evidence that the influence of the same state legislators has been celebrated, rather than allowed to continue, for far too long.
Russell Sharp, Edmond
Using children as pawns
We all love teachers. Each of us has memories of teachers who impacted our lives. Teachers hold a special position of trust. We entrust our children to their care for many hours each day, five days a week. Children, by default, love their teachers.
I support our teachers and am thankful for them, but not when they use innocent children as pawns. I was deeply disturbed that my 7-year-old grandchild’s teacher invited her to attend the rally at the Capitol. The teacher might have thought it would be an educational experience, but I question that. That child has no more clue of the issues than the man in the moon. She does know that she loves her teacher.
I wish our teachers would push for consolidation of school districts, saving the overhead costs of countless administrators. I wish our teachers would press for auditing school districts to discover exactly where the money the state provides goes and how it is spent. (We could also audit state agencies for fraud, waste and abuse.) I wish our teachers would examine unfunded federal mandates and see how much of the money allocated to education goes to meet those often-unnecessary requirements.
Most of all, I wish our teachers would accept the 19 percent appropriation increase the Legislature approved and get back to their calling — teaching children.
Gary Adams, Oklahoma City
Car doesn’t work
So, Gov. Mary Fallin thinks efforts by Oklahoma teachers to improve our educational system are “kind of like a teenager wanting a better car.” If that’s the case, I applaud the “teenagers.” At least they understand that the car Mother Fallin has given them is nothing but junk — the brakes don’t work, the windshield is broken, the doors won’t close and none of the lights work. These “teenagers” know that the car Mother Fallin gave them isn’t capable of getting them down the block, much less into the future. So yes, it is time for a better car! Instead of being critical of our teachers, Fallin should be praising them for they are the ones who made the recent gains possible — not her.
Abel Aldaz Jr., Midwest City
Better results ahead?
I would think than when the teachers are finally satisfied with their pay and funding they would return the favor to parents and taxpayers. They could work to ensure the students learn more, test better and are more prepared for college. If you pay them more, they should produce better grads. Currently 40 percent of high school graduates are required to take non-credit courses to get into state colleges. That should be an embarrassment to all of common education.
Gary Baker, Oklahoma City
Stand with our teachers
Parents, if Oklahoma teachers were just going for a raise, they would have stopped by now. They are now going for funding of your children’s education and future — and, ultimately, the future of Oklahoma. Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and all Oklahomans, it is time for us to stand with our teachers.
Tom Williams, Moore
This week, the National Conference on Undergraduate Research, the annual premier gathering of exceptional collegiate talent, has been convening in Oklahoma for the first time, on the University of Central Oklahoma campus in Edmond. UCO is proud to serve as host.
The more than 4,100 student researchers — 809 from Oklahoma — and their faculty mentors represent 460 colleges and universities from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and 18 countries at the conference sponsored by the Council for Undergraduate Research.
Students are presenting their research, scholarly and creative activities in the form of posters, oral presentations, performances or art. In addition to the display and discussion of their work, participants are benefiting from nationally recognized plenary speakers, a graduate school and professional fair, and excursions throughout Oklahoma City and central Oklahoma.
This conference attracts exceptional students, among the best and brightest from their institutions, public and private, small and large. Through their proactive programs, all demonstrate a shared commitment to undergraduate research as a proven high-impact practice that accelerates learning and results in high graduation rates and post-graduate educational pursuits.
UCO’s mission to “help students learn” includes research, scholarly and creative activities as one of our Central Six principles. These beyond-discipline skills are cornerstones for transformative learning at UCO. In this way, graduates acquire skills, attitudes, motivation and persistence to adapt to WASHINGTON —
To “reading, writing and arithmetic,” we can now add “solidarity.” The new teacher activism — born in West Virginia and spreading to Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona — is not a flash in the pan. And it’s about more than the demand for higher wages and benefits. It is a revolt against decades of policies that gutted public institutions.
More immediately, it is a response to the decimation of state spending on education since the 2008 recession. The economy has recovered, but state support for education has not. In an excellent report in November on K-12 expenditures, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities showed that in 29 states, “total state funding per student was lower in the 2015 school year than in the 2008 school year” in real terms.
In Arizona, spending per student was down an astonishing 36.6 percent; in Oklahoma, it had dropped 15.6 percent; in Kentucky, 5.9 percent. Among the states, Concordia University-Portland reported, Arizona and Oklahoma ranked, respectively, 48th and 47th in 2015 per-pupil outlays.
As a marker of our country’s political direction, the teacher strikes and demonstrations are part of a larger upheaval against conservative assumptions that have long been embedded in the country’s thinking, in some cases going back to the 1970s. They should be seen in tandem with the student-led revolt against National Rifle Association orthodoxy on gun control and the mobilization against President Trump.
Progressives and moderates have been winning elections in unlikely places. Democrat Conor Lamb’s victory last month in a very red Pennsylvania district is a prime example of a trend visible all over the nation. In eight special elections in Oklahoma since Trump took office, according to an analysis last month by FiveThirtyEight, the swing to Democrats was 32.1 percentage points. It ranked behind only Kentucky, which held just two special elections in that period.
The interaction of broad opposition to Trump, growing engagement on the Democratic side of politics, and specific revolts against conservative ideas suggests that we may be at the beginning the inevitable and accelerating challenges of change they will experience in their careers and in their lives.
Most of our guests have never visited Oklahoma. We believe this will not be the last time they are here. Beyond the immediate, positive impact of this national event on the metro, there can be longer-term benefits. As the metro continues to develop and “surprise” those who visit us for the first time, as the Innovation District emerges from planning and possibility to dynamic opportunity, and as the area persists in developing its persona that is becoming more attractive to those who are at the dawn of their careers, many of the NCUR student researchers from throughout the country will recall their time here and look toward charting their future with us. They may return with their smartphone and laptop, as well as their ideas, energy, talent and friends.
Human talent, homegrown here in Oklahoma and those who join us from elsewhere, will always be our most sustainable asset. of an uprising that transcends the moment. Corey Robin, a Brooklyn College political scientist and the author of “The Reactionary Mind,” argues that what we’re seeing is an attack on the “Prop 13 Order.”
In 1978, California passed the property tax-slashing Proposition 13, which portended the Reagan Revolution and a general shift to the right. The measure reflected conservative activism and the power of right-wing money. But it was also a sign of genuine popular feeling that property taxes on average homeowners had risen too high, too fast. The anti-tax movement quickly took hold across the country.
Today’s rebellion, Prop 13 in reverse, is also built on genuine disaffection, in this case over the impact of deep budget cutbacks in conservative states, usually to support tax cuts tilted toward corporations and the well-off.
The teachers are bringing this home by refusing to confine their energies to their own pay. They are highlighting the deterioration of the conditions students face — aging textbooks, crumbling buildings, and reductions in actual teaching time.
The focus on school funding could also transform our education debate. A legitimate desire for education reform and widespread interest in charter schools as one vehicle for change have often elided into unrestrained teacherand union-bashing. Parts of the right have used both as cover for undermining the very idea of public education.
The red state insurrections are a reminder of something that can be lost in our back-and-forth about school reform: Money matters. You can’t run a decent school system on the cheap. Genuine reformers aren’t wrong to demand improvements in school quality. But they need to separate themselves unequivocally from those who simply want to trash public services.
It’s too early to be certain that 2018 is 1978 turned on its head. But it would be short-sighted to overlook the signs that conservative ideology is on the defensive and that most voters are exhausted by divisive and short-sighted presidential leadership. We have a lot of problems to solve, and the old right-wing bromides are only making them worse.
WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP