School funding and welfare: How low can Oklahoma go?
Oklahoma’s growing failures in school funding and social welfare were recently showcased across two in-depth National Public Radio reports. Both are warnings to the rest of the country, revealing what happens when states take the route pioneered by Kansas, Michigan and Oklahoma, all of which have deliberately starved their governmental services. Each posits the question: How low can Oklahoma go?
KOSU’s Emily Wendler and WBUR’s Tom Ashbrook led the 48-minute discussion, Public School Funding at a Loss, in Oklahoma and Elsewhere, Nov. 30 on NPR’s On Point. They started with Oklahoma because it spends about $3,000 per student less than the national average, and it has cut funding more than any other state.
Ashbrook explained:
“Oklahoma public schools are on the ropes after years of budget cuts. Four-day school weeks and more. We’ll take it as a big case study and look at Donald Trump’s new education secretary.”
After Wendler’s overview of the state’s budget crisis and the defeat of SQ 779, which would have raised teacher salaries, former-Grant H.S. teacher and newly elected state Rep. Mickey Dollens (D-OKC) explained how he and others lost their jobs due to budget cuts. Callers weighed in with the predictable argument that teachers need a raise, but the Legislature and the governor should be held responsible for funding education in a rational way.