Reform bills produce the standard resistance from OEA

IN ending a two-week strike by teachers, the president of the Oklahoma Education Association noted that common education had secured $479 million in new funding from the Legislature and declared it “a historic victory for students.” She could have added that the education establishment didn’t have to give up a thing to get it.

Reform wasn’t a part of the conversation with lawmakers. Instead, the focus was strictly on the need for additional funding. After the Legislature approved numerous tax increases to raise that nearly half-billion dollars, the OEA proceeded with the walkout and used some of its time working to oppose any potential reforms.

Reform, even modest reform, is a nonstarter for the union because it’s in the business of defending the status quo. It’s also in the business of making life miserable for legislators who propose reform. Consequently, most lawmakers choose not to.

This goes even for legislators with nothing to lose. Consider 2016, when the Senate’s leader at the time, Brian Bingman of Sapulpa, carried a bill to consolidate the administrative functions of dependent school districts. No schools would have been closed and no kids would have been shuttled elsewhere, but no matter — the measure was demonized by the OEA and others. Bingman, who would be leaving the Legislature a few months later due to term limits, immediately waved the white flag. The bill never received a hearing.

Now the OEA is fighting three sensible bills it says “hurt public education.”

One effort, contained in Senate Bill 1398 and Senate Joint Resolution 70, would allow school districts to use property tax revenue, now used primarily for building funds, for operational costs such as teacher pay. The OEA says this change would “hurt equity statewide,” an argument some lawmakers have made as well. The concern is that districts with more ad valorem revenue would be able to pay their teachers more than other districts. But the Senate author has said this change would create competition, not disparity. The union of course wants nothing to do with competition.

Another bill in the OEA’s cross hairs, HB 1046xx, would allow for consolidation of superintendents in counties with fewer than 400,000 residents. “This is an attack on local control, and the savings will be minuscule,” the OEA says.

It’s actually an attempt to bring some sanity to the current arrangement in which each of the state’s 500plus districts has a superintendent. Savings could be in the millions of dollars, which may be “minuscule” in the education establishment’s view but is real money to most Oklahoma taxpayers.

The union also wants to spike HB 1044xx, which would direct the Commissioners of the Land Office to send $500 per year to classrooms for instructional materials and supplies. The union says the result would really be more like $45 per classroom, but that this effort is illegal anyway. Yet it appears from the bill’s language that the money would come the CLO’s interest earnings, not from a raid on its school trust corpus.

In the private sector, reform — change — is a necessity for survival. For the OEA, it remains a four-letter word.