Education: Open schools touted; funding change sought

Gov. Kevin Stitt maintained pressure Monday on Oklahoma schools to teach in person through the pandemic and proposed a significant change to education funding.

In his annual State of the State address before t he state House Chamber, Stitt sing led out Tulsa Public Schools for remaining in virtual learning while most schools in the surrounding area educate students traditionally. The majority of districts in Oklahoma have spent most of the school year in person.

With Oklahoma City Public Schools re opening its middle and high schools t his week, Tulsa is the largest district still teaching primarily through distance learning.

“The only difference between schools that stay closed and those that have safely reopened is the mindset to find a way to make it happen,” Stitt said in his address.

The governor has urged schools for months to reopen to improve academic performance, and Tulsa has been a frequent recipient of his scrutiny.

Tulsa Superintendent Deborah Gist said the governor is “a bully” deflecting attention from failed leadership in the pandemic.

“Our governor only attacks ,” Gist wrote in a Facebook post after Stitt's speech Monday. “He pits families against teachers and districts against other

districts and confuses an already tumultuous time for all of us. He is intentionally seeking to divide us more than this horrible situation already has.”

In a news conference held an hour before the governor's address, the superintendent implored the governor and state leaders to begin vaccinating teachers and school staff against COVID-19. Stitt moved educators up to Phase 2 of the state's vaccine rollout, but it remains unclear when most school employees will be vaccinated on a widespread scale in Oklahoma.

Gist said Tulsa aims to bring students back into classrooms this month, much sooner than many expected. Two weeks ago, the district delayed inperson instruction to March because of amid-January spike of COVID-19 cases.

Now, local infection rates are showing a meaningful decline, she said. Any decision to reopen schools is based on science, data and advice from the Tulsa City-County Health Department, not politics.

“I think that because there's public pressure people think that we' re reacting to that public pressure,” Gist said. “Quite the opposite.”

`Ghost students'

The governor applied new meaning to the term “ghost students ,” a phrase that entered Oklahoma's vernacular under a different context a year and a half ago.

Stitt said the state should distribute education funds based on each district's current enrollment levels, not the highest student count from the past three years. He said the current system is “unacceptable” because it creates hundreds of millions of dollars in overlap when students, who attended a different district the previous year, are counted for both their former and current school.

“They're called `ghost students,'” Stitt said. “We're sending money to districts to educate kids who don't go there, and that's simply not fair.”

State schools Superintendent Joy Hofmeister said she is “interested in learning more” about the governor's plan.

“The education funding formula is in statute and not a choice of districts, rather a state law,” Hofmeister said in a statement Monday. “Our focus is on ensuring students have the supports and resources they need, especially in times of great instability.”

This school year is a “great example” for why current enrollment levels shouldn't dictate state funding, said Shawn Hime, executive direct or of t he Oklahoma State School Boards Association.

Many schools had lower enrollment than usual this year, especially among early childhood students. Hime said districts expect their numbers to rebound before the next school year.

“We know that thousands of kindergarten and prekindergarten students did not attend school this year due to pandemic fears,” Hime said. “If this new law goes into place, then our schools will not be funded in August and be ready for those students as they come back next year.”

The governor's proposal would force districts to operate with funding based on the anomaly of the 2020-21 school year, even as their enrollment tracks back to normal. It also wouldn't change the fact that Oklahoma spends less per student than all bordering states.

Oklahomans became familiar with the phrase“ghost students” from an ongoing criminal investigation of Epic Charter Schools.

In July 2019, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation alleged the virtual charter school had illegally inflated its enrollment counts with “ghost students,” who were enrolled in Epic while simultaneously attending private schools or being home schooled. These students reportedly received little to no instruction from Epic, according to a search warrant filed in Oklahoma County District Court.

Epic denies any wrongdoing and all allegations that it counted enrollment unlawfully.