Tulsa Education: December 2019 Archives

UPDATE 2019/12/03: Here is the final list of candidates who filed for the February / April 2020 school board and municipal elections in Tulsa County. The following school board seats had only a single candidate file (Office No. 5, unless otherwise noted):

This is a reworking of a post from four years ago, but it has been updated with current information about open seats and candidates, and there is some new information below.

We are in the midst of the annual filing period for public school board positions in Oklahoma, which ends Wednesday, December 4, 2019, at 5 p.m. K-12 school districts will have a single seat, Office No. 5, up for election to a five-year term. K-8 dependent districts (Keystone is the only one in Tulsa County) have three seats that rotate through three-year terms. Liberty, in far-south Tulsa County, also has Office No. 4 on the ballot. After the first day of filing in Tulsa County, 9 seats have drawn one candidate, but only 4 have drawn two candidates. No one has filed in Skiatook, Broken Arrow, or Keystone school districts, or the Tulsa Technology Center board.

Filing is also open for a number of municipalities; candidates have filed for city office in Collinsville, Owasso, and Sand Springs.

(Here is the current list of candidates for Tulsa County school board seats. And here's where you'll find maps showing school district and election district boundaries.)

School board filing always comes at a busy and distracted time of year. As I've written before, it's almost as if school board elections were deliberately scheduled to escape the notice of potential candidates and voters.

The school board primary election will be held on February 11, 2020, for those seats where there are three or more candidates. If no one wins a majority of the vote in the February election, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020. If a seat draws only two candidates, the election will be held on April 7, 2020.

The Tulsa district, largest in the state, has two out of seven seats up for election to a four-year term, Offices No. 5 and 6.

Tulsa Election District 5 is midtown Tulsa, bounded by Riverside Drive, Yale Avenue, 11th Street, and 51st Street, minus the area NW of 21st and Peoria, minus the area SE of 41st and Harvard, and plus a few streets south of I-44 between Riverside and Peoria.

The current member for District 5 is Brian Hosmer, a professor of Western American History at the University of Tulsa. He was appointed in February to replace Cindy Decker, who was elected in 2016 and resigned to serve as director of Educare, a project of the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

As of Monday night, Hosmer has not filed for re-election, but Kelsey Royce and Shane Saunders have filed for the seat. Royce, a registered Democrat, wrote a strongly critical analysis of Tulsa Public School finances published in Tulsa Kids in September 2019. Saunders, a conservative Republican, is current vice chairman and former chairman of Iron Gate, head of Trident Energy, and served as press secretary and legislative assistant to Congressman John Sullivan. He applied to fill the vacant seat when Decker resigned. It looks like either candidate that has filed so far would be an improvement and would hold the administration accountable on fiscal issues, but it remains to be seen where they stand on educational and social issues affecting the schools.

Tulsa Election District 6 is just to the east of District 5 bounded roughly by I-244, 61st Street, Yale Avenue, and 89th East Avenue, minus wedges of land NE of I-44 & 31st (around Skelly Elementary) and SW of I-44 and 41st Street (around Promenade Mall), and minus the section SW of 51st and Sheridan. The incumbent is Ruth Ann Fate, a registered Democrat who was first elected to the seat in 1996. She has one opponent so far, Jerry R. Griffin, a registered Republican.

Two candidates have filed for Bixby Office 5: Tristy Fryer (Republican) and Todd Hagopian (Libertarian).

Two candidates have filed for Union Office 5: Ken Kinnear (Republican) and Brad Swearengin (Democrat).

In addition, Tulsa Technology Center board seat 4 is up for a seven-year term, representing the City of Tulsa west of the river, plus midtown Tulsa from 21st to 81st, Riverside to Yale, plus a square mile from 71st to 81st, 49th West Ave to 33rd West Ave in Creek County, and the half-section from Yale to Hudson, 21st to 31st in Tulsa. TTC seems to have more money than it knows what to do with; it would be lovely to have a fiscal conservative on the board who could curb their building spree. Incumbent David Charney, a real-estate developer and a registered Democrat, has not yet filed for re-election and no one has yet filed to challenge him.

Looking through the online biographies, I think it's fair to assume that there is not a single conservative on the Tulsa School Board. Five (Stacey Woolley, Jennettie Marshall, Shawna Keller, Ruth Ann Fate, and Suzanne Schreiber) are registered Democrats; two (Jania Wester in District 2 and Brian Hosmer in District 5) are registered as independents.

TPS has received increasing criticism from across the political spectrum for fiscal irresponsibility and educational failure:

Black Wall Street Times, 11/26/2016: Anonymous teacher writes, "I literally feel like at TPS, we are set up for failure," cites disastrous educational results, teacher resignations. The same article includes achievement statistics for African-American students; Deborah Brown charter school leads the way with 45% meeting proficiency, while numbers at all but a few schools are in the single digits.

Tulsa World, 11/26/2016: The number of Tulsa schools receiving an F on the Oklahoma School Report card increased from 21 to 28. Only Booker T. Washington High School received an A in academic achievement; Edison HS has a B, Webster, Memorial, and Will Rogers have Ds; the rest of the high schools have Fs. Only 18% of TPS students who were assessed were at or above grade level.

If you're a conservative, you should give serious thought to running for school board, even if you have no school-aged children, even if you have children that are homeschooled or in private school, even if you've never had a child in the public schools. The public school system exists to serve all citizens by educating the children of the community, so every citizen has an interest in the curriculum being used, the way discipline is handled, the condition of the school buildings, and the credentials, skills, and philosophical presuppositions of the teachers, principals, and administrators. Property owners support the school system through ad valorem taxes, and so they have a reasonable interest in the proper and efficient expenditure of those funds. So do all citizens who pay state income and sales taxes, which provide funds to supplement local property taxes.

If you are, like me, a homeschool or private school parent, you will have experience and valuable insights with successful, classical alternatives to the faddish and failing teaching methods, priorities, and content currently in use in the public schools.

I ran some numbers, comparing 2010 census data, broken down by age, with the closest school attendance data I could find, from the 2010-2011 school year. In the Tulsa school district, the average daily attendance was only 67.2% of the number of school-aged children (5-18) who lived in the district on Census Day 2010. That means about a third of school-aged kids were either homeschooled or in private schools, the highest proportion of any district in the metro area. The Tulsa district also had the lowest percentage of residents in the 5-18 bracket -- 17.9%. Compare that to the Sperry district, where 91% of school-aged residents attended the public school, and where 22.6% of the residents were school-aged.

It seems that a substantial number of families move from the Tulsa district to the suburbs when their children reach kindergarten, or, if they stay, many opt for homeschooling or private schools. Those numbers make a strong case for new leaders in the Tulsa district. And if the school board is going to be strictly representative, at least two of the seven members should have children in homeschool or private school, and a majority should be conservative.

Filing is simple: A notarized declaration of candidacy, and a signed copy of the statutory requirements for school board candidates. For this office there is no filing fee. You can view the Oklahoma school board filing packet online. And although school board elections are officially non-partisan, the local and state Republican Party organizations will provide assistance to registered Republicans who are candidates for non-partisan office. (I suspect the same is true of the Democrats.)

There was a time when it was generally agreed that schools existed to transmit knowledge and the values of the community to the rising generation, working alongside parents. At some point, as part of the Gramscian long march through the institutions, the public schools were infiltrated by Leftists who saw them as a venue for missionary work, converting children away from the values of their parents, away from the ideals that made America a prosperous and peaceful nation. The Left has influence over schools of education, textbook publishers, teachers' unions, and continuing education for teachers, administrators, and board members.

Shortly after President Trump was sworn in, Tulsa Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist issued a statement to assure everyone that leftist policies on immigration and transgenderism would continue to be followed in Tulsa Public Schools:

We do not ask for immigration status when families enroll their children. We would not share information about immigration status with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Plyler vs. Doe found that every child has a constitutional right to equal access to education regardless of their immigration status, and we welcome immigrant and refugee families at Tulsa Public Schools.

We honor the dignity and equality of our transgender and gender non-conforming students. These students have the right to present themselves in a way that is consistent with their gender identity so long as rules are followed for appropriate dress that apply to all students. They also have the right to use restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities that are consistent with their gender identity. This may include the use of gender neutral restrooms. We recognize the privacy of students in transition and would not disclose information about gender identity or expression without their consent.

Also in 2017, TPS sponsored a series of meetings called "Exploring Equity," featuring one-sided panels pushing intersectionality.

The next step in the LGBTQ fight for equality lies in increased representation and intersectionality, panelists said Thursday during the latest talk in a Tulsa Public Schools series meant to foster equity.

About 150 people sat with each other at 19 rectangular tables to hear a panel on LGBTQ issues and then discuss ideas that struck them during the talk.

The panel included Moises Echeverria, with the Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice; Toby Jenkins, with Oklahomans for Equality; Abril Marshall, with Camp Fire Green Country; Tulsa attorney Alyssa Bryant; and longtime local advocate Nancy McDonald.

If you live in a suburban or small-town district, you might suppose your district is safe from Leftist influence. Think again. Through their college training, their teachers' union newsletter, continuing education courses, peer relationships, and curriculum, your districts' teachers and administrators work in an atmosphere of Leftist presuppositions about the world. It takes strength, conviction, and vigilance for a conservative educator to be conscious of that atmosphere and to resist its influence.

Back in fall 2017, Mandy Callihan, a teacher and parent in Jay, Oklahoma, was infuriated to learn that her 12-year-old daughter was being taught in school about mutual masturbation and anal and oral sex, complete with a worksheet she had to fill out. She and other parents went to the school looking for answers and discovered that the curriculum had been approved by the school board and the middle school principal. The superintendent, claiming ignorance, halted the program, but parents were told it would have to be brought back the following year.

In Minnesota in 2017, the Center for the American Experiment has published a detailed 10-page report on slipping standards at the once-successful Edina school district in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. While academic achievement has declined, Leftist indoctrination is on the rise:

Today, for example, K-2 students at Edina Highlands Elementary School are learning--through the "Melanin Project"--to focus on skin color and to think of white skin as cause for guilt. "Equity" is listed as a primary criterion on the district's evaluation for K-5 math curricula. At Edina High School, teachers are haranguing students on "White Privilege," and drilling into them that white males oppress and endanger women. In a U.S. Literature and Composition class, 11th-graders are being taught to "apply marxist [sic], feminist" and "post-colonial" "lenses to literature."

In short, in Edina, reading, writing, math and critical thinking skills are taking a backseat to an ideological crusade.

The Leftist bent of the school district came to public attention after the overwrought reaction by students and teachers to the election results, but the roots of the problem went back several years, to the school's decision to try to close the achievement gap between students of different races by focusing on structural racism as the cause:

The All for All plan's fundamental premise is that white racism--not socio-economic factors like family breakdown--is the primary cause of the achievement gap. If minority students' academic performance is to improve, "systems that perpetuate inequities" must be "interrupt[ed]" and "barriers rooted in racial constructs and cultural misunderstandings" must be "eliminate[d]," according to the district's position statement on "Racial Equity and Cultural Competence in Edina Public Schools."

The story mentions one race-conscious elementary school principal who adopted a curriculum provided by the slanderous Leftist group that calls itself the Southern Poverty Law Center. The same principal eliminated flex groups -- opportunities during one period for children of similar ability levels to work together with a teacher, receiving targeted instruction -- because they were perceived as insufficiently diverse. A high school literature class describes a course goal in this way: "By the end of the year, you will have... learned how to apply marxist [sic], feminist, post-colonial [and] psychoanalytic... lenses to literature."

There are, it must be said, many good conservatives, many devout Christians serving in Oklahoma's public schools. But they need support in the form of school board members who will set policy and curriculum and ensure that the paid staff adhere to it. Conservative school board members should not give undue deference to "professionals" who have been trained to see education through a Leftist lens. The subject matter taught, the methods used, and the values undergirding it all should be firmly under the control of our elected representatives on the school board.

Education is necessarily ideological, because it rests on presuppositions about knowledge, truth, goodness, and beauty. The ideology of the public schools should reflect the ideology of the community.

If I were running, here are some of the planks that would be in my platform:

• Introduce the classical trivium as the philosophy and method of instruction in schools that are currently failing. That includes a heavy emphasis on memorizing facts in the elementary years, which gives children a sense of mastery and accomplishment and provides a solid foundation for subsequent learning.
• Instill pride in our city, state, and country. America has its flaws, but it is a beacon of liberty and opportunity that inspires hope in hundreds of millions of people around the world who wish they could live and work here. Our children should understand the aspects of our culture and history that have made our country prosperous and peaceful. The "black armband" view of history should have no place in our schools.
• Keep the Land Run re-enactments in our elementary schools. It's a fun and memorable way to introduce students to our state's unique history. There is an activist in Oklahoma City who managed to convince historically ignorant principals and school board members there that the '89 Land Run was an act of genocide. Oklahoma City, founded by the '89 Land Run, no longer has reenactments of that event, because of a zealot who pushed her slanderous revision of history on ignoramuses in charge of the schools.
• Return music to the elementary grades. An early introduction to classical music and learning to make music by singing have tremendous developmental and behavioral benefits.
• Review all federal grants and determine whether the cost of compliance and the loss of independence is worth the money.
• Young people who foolishly believe that swapping sexes will solve their deep unhappiness deserve pity and guidance. It is utter cruelty to humor their misplaced hope that "changing gender identity" will cure their misery. Leadership at each school should craft a way to accommodate these deluded young people with compassion and dignity, while protecting the dignity of everyone else, and while affirming the biologically undeniable reality of the two sexes.

Thankfully, doing the right thing on that last point will no longer require resisting Federal pressure, because the Trump administration halted the Obama administration policy that denied funding based on a perverted interpretation of Title IX. But as shown above, Tulsa's school administration is fully on board with radical gender theory, and it's likely that your school administration has been thoroughly indoctrinated in the same way.

Our public schools need principled, intelligent conservative leadership. Will you step forward to serve?

FROM THE ARCHIVES: My 2015 post on school board filing included links to two important articles about the leftist direction of your local public school board, particularly on sexual morality and gender identity.

Stella Morabito wrote, "Ask Not Who's Running For President, Ask Who's Running For School Board," citing the recent battle in Fairfax County, Virginia, over transgender policy as one among many reasons.

Walt Heyer, a man who underwent sex-change surgery and then, realizing that the change failed to give him the happiness he had hoped for, changed back, wrote about the Obama Administration using its perverted interpretation of Title IX to force public schools to trample their students in the transgender war against science and reason.