2022 Tulsa School Board general election: BatesLine ballot card

Published April 3, 2022, postdated to remain at the top of the page until the polls close on Tuesday, April 5, 2022.

Tuesday, April 5, 2022, is general election day for K-12 school board seats in Oklahoma. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Seats on technology center boards (what we used to call vocational-technical, or vo-tech, schools) are also on the ballot. Some cities (Sand Springs and Sapulpa among them) have city council runoffs, and there are some municipal and school district propositions up for a vote as well. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see. Not everyone will have a reason to go to the polls, but the Tulsa Tech district covers a large area , so double-check, just to be sure.

As of a recent change to election law (HB 2082 in 2018), any contested school board seat will be settled on the first Tuesday in April, except that an election with three or more candidates can be won outright in the February primary if a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. This happened this year in Broken Arrow Office No. 2: Conservative candidate Debbie Taylor received 51% of the vote in a three-way race for an open seat. While this was a happy result, because a smaller electorate turns out for a primary than for the general, it would be good to change the law so that every contested race has a two-candidate election on the April general election date. Some voters prefer not to turn up to vote until more informed voters have narrowed the choices for them.

While school elections in Oklahoma appear without party labels on the ballot, political parties and partisan political figures are free to support and endorse candidates. But schools have drifted from their original purpose of educating students according to their own community's values and priorities. Leftist ideologues have successfully gained a foothold through school boards and college-level schools of education to use public schools as part of a strategy of cultural transformation, the Gramscian "Long March through the Institutions." Pedagogy based on Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory (even if it doesn't use those names) has found its way even into rural public schools, as teachers and administrators come under the influence of organizations like leftist national teacher's unions and their state affiliates (the Oklahoma Education Association).

A second dimension driving the politicization of school elections centers on accountability: School boards are too often filled with rubber stamps who blindly approve whatever the superintendent puts in front of them. The result is administrative bloat, feather-bedding, insider deals, and, worst of all, educational failure. Taxpayer money doesn't find its way into the classroom to serve the needs of students. In the Tulsa Public Schools, this situation is exacerbated by the board and administration's entanglement with foundations which use their "grants" as chains to drag the district in the foundations' desired ideological direction. Parents, students, and taxpayers need board members who will operate the district in accordance with their needs, values, and priorities, rather than turning over these public institutions to the whims of private philanthropists.

State proficiency tests show Tulsa Public Schools performance lagging well behind the rest of the state in every subject at every grade level, by anywhere from 8 to 21 percentage points. 10% of TPS 7th graders were proficient in math, the district's best grade-level math score, but only 3% of TPS 8th graders were. Meanwhile, the majority on the TPS board keep voting early contract extensions for Superintendent Deborah "Cruella" Gist so that board members newly elected by the voters will not have the option of replacing here. This level of failure cannot be fixed by more funds; regime change is essential. At the moment, TPS has two board members who are not rubber stamps -- Jeannettie Marshall and Jerry Griffin. Electing E'Lena Ashley and Tim Harris would result in a majority of the 7 TPS board members committed to accountability.

The third political dimension affecting schools is the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, you have parents and taxpayers who supported prudent precautions when the pandemic was new and its severity was unknown. The early response was driven by the since-disproven fear that the virus could be spread easily by people who showed no symptoms of illness. Now that the virus has become endemic, now that early variants have been supplanted by more infectious but far less severe variants, now that we know that children are at low risk of acquiring or transmitting the virus, now that we see the educational, developmental, and emotional damage that schoolchildren have suffered from mandatory mask-wearing and school closures, parents and taxpayers want to see schools back to their pre-pandemic practices, with in-person instruction, student athletics, music, and activities as before, and no mask or vaccine mandates.

The Democrat Party (but by no means all Democratic voters) has aligned itself with the agendas of cultural transformation, unaccountable insider dealing, irrational risk-aversion, and authoritarian health mandates. Although voters across the political spectrum oppose the Democrat Party's positions on these issues, the Republican Party and conservative organizations have emerged as a resource for Oklahomans of all political affiliations who wish to take the schools back from the Leftist ideologues and grifters and to restore the original purpose of the schools -- to teach children the knowledge and skills they need to be independent, free Americans, participating knowledgeably as in free citizens in a free republic, living effectively as free economic agents in a free market, and exercising personal freedom as they weigh risks and benefits.

Independent advocacy groups like Tulsa Parents Voice and Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights and local Republican organizations are making endorsements and rallying volunteer support for candidates who will work for accountability, parental involvement, and parental rights.

Here in the Tulsa metro area, pro-parent and pro-accountability forces are supporting the following school board candidates. Footnotes indicate which groups have endorsed each. Links are to each candidate's primary web presence.

Tulsa Public Schools, Office No. 4: E'Lena Ashley ^{1 2 3}
Tulsa Public Schools, Office No. 7: Tim Harris ^{1 2 3}
Jenks Public Schools, Office No. 2: Ashley Cross ^{1 2 3}
Sand Springs Public Schools, Office No. 2: MaRanda Trimble-Kerley ^{1 2 3}
Union Public Schools, Office No. 2: Shelley Gwartney ^{1 2 3}
Tulsa Technology District, Office No. 3: Mark Griffin ^{2 3}
Owasso Public Schools, Office No. 2: Joshua Stanton ¹
Bixby Public Schools, Office No. 2: Jake Rowland
Bartlesville Public Schools, Office No. 2: Jonathan Bolding ^{1 2}
Olive Public Schools, Office No. 2: Lori Bates ¹

¹ Endorsed by Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights
² Supported by Tulsa Parents Voice
³ Supported by Tulsa County Republican Party

All of the above candidates are registered Republican voters. All of the K-12 board candidates listed received an "A" survey rating and an endorsement from Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights, except for Bixby candidate Jake Rowland, who was given a "B" grade for his survey responses, and OKHPR did not make an endorsement in that race, nor has OKHPR weighed in on the Tulsa Tech board race. Note that since Bartlesville and Olive are in other counties, the Tulsa County GOP would not be involved in those races. While Bixby Parents Voice has not endorsed Rowland, they have expressed alarm at incumbent candidate Amanda Stephens's vote to keep sexually explicit books in the high school library.

MORE:

• Editorial commentary from the Tulsa Beacon.
• iVoterGuide for Tulsa County school board races

May 17, 2021 TPS board meeting: Starting about 19:30, TPS Board Member Jeannettie Marshall protests the payment of a check to the Tulsa Community Foundation for a contract made with a non-existent organization called "The Opportunity Project" and the fact that two TCF-affiliated board members (Schrieber and Barba Perez) voted on the matter without recusing themselves. Only Marshall and Griffin expressed concern about the lack of transparency; Office 4 incumbent Shawna Keller remained silent and voted to write a check to an organization which had not been awarded a contract. The board rubber stamps tried to slide this through on the "consent agenda." (Note that IT Director Joe Jennings and Chief Equity Officer Devin Fletcher have "their pronouns" listed on their Zoom IDs.)

Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association TPS District 4 candidate forum: Note that incumbent Shawna Keller (D) is still wearing a mask; challenger E'Lena Ashley (R) is not.

Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association TPS District 7 candidate forum: Tim Harris voices his priorities for parent involvement, teaching basic skills (a task which TPS is failing to perform), a forensic, line-by-line audit of TPS finances, and protecting children from inappropriate classroom content.

TYPROS TPS District 7 candidate forum: Former District Attorney Tim Harris (R) is running against Susan Lamkin (D). Lamkin is backed by the same donors and leaders who back the other rubber stamps on the board. Harris's experience managing the personnel, mission, and budget of a large government department -- the Tulsa County District Attorney's office -- will be a great asset to the board, as he will know from experience where to look for wasted money and mission creep.

Tulsa Tech Candidate Forum: Mark Griffin, the incumbent Republican, is being challenged by Democrat Jim Provenzano, husband of leftist Democrat State Rep. Melissa Provenzano.

Union Public Schools candidate forum: Incumbent Chris McNeil (D) vs. challenger and PTA leader Shelley Gwartney (R).