Jon Echols, What in the Hell are you Trying to Pull?
Sooner Politics' David Van Risseghem published a heck of a story last week asking why House and Senate leadership was sitting on education reform legislation yet also trying to entice the new anti tax advocacy group Oklahoma Taxpayers Unite to push for an additional state question.
In particular there are several versions of a bill that would put a cap on administration expenditures and other extraneous spending in order to force the spending of 65% of the school budget on classroom instruction, teachers, text books, and supplies, to ensure that the school administrators weren't building multi million dollar soccer fields while classrooms suffered shortages of materials and teachers were under paid. That amount isn't draconian, in fact it is the national average for classroom spending and along with that needs to be a bill that lays out that ONLY teachers that have a full class load schedule are to be considered teachers to prevent principles from teaching one study hall class and seeing their six figure pay called teacher pay expense on the books.
This will free up around 10% of the massive 7.6 billion dollar annual education budget in Oklahoma, sending $760,000,000 directly into the classrooms, around $1200 per student. Even better it will eviscerate the highest paid employees in a district, the layers of six figure earning administrators who surround themselves with even more six figure salaried assistants. In the smaller districts it will break the back of the superintendent lobby that keeps the teachers poor and stirred up against the local state reps and state senators.
Both the need and the amazing benefits from passing this one simple bill are so evident that David Van is asking why House leadership isn't putting these bills up for a floor vote? Instead, they are reaching out to the new activist group trying to get them to take the political heat and dilute the referendum on the HB 1010XX teacher taxes. The waste is well documented and self evident. Why the inaction?
The article points out the criminal indictment of State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister by Oklahoma County D.A. David Prater for campaign violations during the 2014 race for state superintendent. Janet Barresi was unseated by a coalition of dark money funded by the teachers unions, the state council of school administrators, campaign consultant Fount Holland, and the Democratic Party. Let that sink in, the Democrats basically funded the election of Republican Joy Hofmeister.
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Why? Because with all her faults Barresi was slowly cranking pressure down on the administrators to be accountable for spending and results. Hofmeister showed her true colors during the teacher strike by remaining silent and announcing that the window for federal testing was extended by one week during the middle of the strike, enabling the districts and teachers to stay at the Capitol another week instead of being forced back into the classroom to avoid losing $700,000,000 in federal funds.
Republican challenger, Linda Murphy laid it all out at a meeting last week in Tulsa, the OEA union president, Alicia Priest, had the full control of the narrative and Hofmeister remained as silent as a whore in church. Republican leadership of the entire state education system sat on her hands while the union extorted more money from the taxpayers. David Van went on to question if the same arrangement has been reached with House and Senate leadership, are they also in the pocket of the teacher unions? Why is the education system not being reformed when it is eating over 53% of the state budget each year due to the state contribution to public education. In fact, the 2019 appropriated state budget will be 7.6 billion dollars, the same amount as the total education spending for the state. Let that sink in, state, local and federal dollars combined amount to as much as the entire state budget.
Remember that the Sooner Tea Party played a part in that 2014 State Superintendent election. Democrats had leaked a good sized file of information to us against the leading candidate for the Democrat candidate for State Superintendent, Freda Deskin, about two months before the primary. The Democrat primary saw the Democratic elite, Boren, former governors, Switzer, all supporting Deskin while the grass roots Democrats and the teacher unions supported John Cox. We knew it was the teacher union that was dropping the dirt on Deskin on us but what we never imagined was that it was far deeper than just an inner party spat over who could beat Hofmeister. John Cox won the primary by about 10% so STP actually was instrumental in deciding who the Democratic candidate would be.
Then Chad Alexander was arrested and his laptop and cell phone was handed over in a plea deal with David Prater. Prater had his eye on former Pro Tem and Senator Glen Coffee, a long standing hatred that Prater was wanting to settle. Getting into Alexander's computer and phone allowed Prater to go after Alexander's ally Fount Holland, who represents most of the RINOs in the state for campaign matters including Coffee at one time. You will recall that shortly after the Alexander arrest we saw a suspicious burglary of Glen Coffee's office. Was it a real burglary or was it an excuse to clean out files and documents before the district attorney could wade through an office?
The Alexander information led to the arrest and charging of Joy Hofmeister, Fount Holland, Lela Odam the director of the OEA, and Steven Crawford the director of the CCOSA, the group that represents school administrators. All were accused of funneling dark money, corporate money unreported to the Ethics Commission, from various sources including long time education supporter American Fidelity Bank who has run a teacher insurance scheme for decades with the OEA.
A few years later and the prosecution fizzled after an overzealous investigator had been found to have re arranged text messages in an effort to make the messages appear more incriminating than they were. Messages were chopped out of the stream, putting messages into different context, leading to the retirement of the investigator and the eventual dropping of the charges along with "the investigation is pending" announcement by Prater to save face.
Did they funnel the money and conspire to elect the Republican Hofmeister over the Democrat John Cox? Of course, but they did it carefully enough to avoid criminal charges.
It remains that we have a sitting Republican State Superintendent that was fraudulently elected with Democrats backing her, with the OEA teachers union backing her, and it paid off for the OEA with zero progress toward streamlining education and cutting the massive waste. It paid off with Joy Hofmeister sitting silent while the OEA managed the dialog at the Capitol and successfully extorted the largest tax increase in state history and tried to extort twice more before failing.
Please call these three House leaders, Jon Echols, Chris Kannaday, and Charles McCall and demand that they get education reform bills on the floor for a vote, in particular the 65% rule that would put Oklahoma in line with the national average for classroom spending.
Here is one of the bills that gives the school administrators three years to slowly crank down the admin costs.
