Are we there again?

The last time education reform happened in Oklahoma, it took a walkout

On April 11, 1990, Oklahoma Education Association President Kyle Dahlem voiced her support for a statewide teacher walkout at a televised press conference.

“Tragically, the emergency in education continues to exist today because of the no votes of twenty state senators last night,” she said. “What we will not tolerate as professionals is a failure to address the needs of children … We will not tolerate any further the shameful salaries that drive educators out of this profession. At this point in time we have used every other measure at our disposal.”

She called on teachers across the state to walk out of their classrooms and join together in a massive protest at the Oklahoma State Capitol. This was 28 years ago next month, and other than the ‘90s hair and the names of the key players, little seems to have changed here since.

The most recently proposed education overhaul, “Step Up Oklahoma,” failed to pass the legislature by 24 votes, and another bipartisan compromise has yet to emerge. Is a statewide teacher walkout the only path forward again for Oklahoma?

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Joy Hofmeister has a simple message for state legislators, similar to Dahlem’s: “If we get to April 2 and this has yet to be solved, I’m absolutely standing with teachers, and it’s not just teachers. We are standing up for the students, the 700,000 schoolkids in Oklahoma who deserve to have a well-trained, well-equipped teacher. Playing politics for political gains with children is unacceptable and it has to end.”

Liz Wattoff, the assistant principal at Webster Public School in Tulsa, also understands the urgency. Her school has been marked by vacancies.

“We have a lot of new teachers,” Wattoff said. “At least half of my teachers are in their first, second, or third year teaching. We have an art teacher who is the third art teacher we’ve hired this school year for that same position. We have a pastor filling in for a long-term sub position in language arts, and he’s the third person filling in there. This is scary because it’s a tested subject. We have a middle school math position that’s been open since Christmas break. We can’t get substitutes because we don’t pay them well enough. So, teachers have to come during their planning time and cover that class. Our teachers are so exhausted at this point.”

This story seems ubiquitous now in Oklahoma, and Superintendent Hofmeister has seen it everywhere.

“All across the state we are experiencing a teacher shortage,” Hofmeister said. “Teachers have been walking out of classrooms and into other states for the last several years. Now those who want to stay in Oklahoma who are dedicated to the students in our classrooms feel they have no more options. They want to go to the Capitol themselves. Each district has determined their own plan for advocating at the Capitol. That’s very different than what you saw in other states with teacher walkouts or strikes. Oklahoma school districts and school boards are voting to support their teachers and are looking for the best way to advocate for higher teacher compensation without further harming kids.”

The numbers are staggering. Oklahoma has 1,940 emergency-certified teachers already this year (up from 32 in 2011). There are 210 school districts in class only four days a week. According the Oklahoma Policy Institute, there were 700 fewer teachers in the state in 2018 than there were in 2014, even though there were about 15,000 more students. But the numbers also obscure the daily struggle of Oklahoma teachers constantly having to decide between their students and their
own families.

Kevin and Allison Wilson from Broken Arrow are one such family. Allison is a public school teacher and Kevin has a degree in electrical engineering and works for a software firm. They have a pudgy, adorable seven-month-old son named Benjamin. The Wilsons love living in Oklahoma, but they intend to leave the state this July, as soon as Allison’s teaching contract ends.

“This is my sixth year of teaching,” she said. “We don’t have even have a TV right now. We have Cricket phones because we can’t afford super-fancy phone plans. We were lucky to get a lot of gift certificates from friends and family for diapers. I was in a car wreck in 2012—it’s terrible to say, but luckily that car wreck ended up paying for my student loans and my car is paid off. Otherwise we wouldn’t be able to afford the house we live in. My husband
and I just want to be paid a
living wage.”

While the future of couples like the Wilsons will likely be decided in the next three weeks, Hofmeister believes the legislature isn’t taking educators (and those who support them) seriously.

“They should have been working on this how many years ago? This is ten years in the making, easily. We’ve been 50th and 49th in teacher pay and funding for a very long time. This is not a new situation … Then we saw that West Virginia did it, and that was the inspiration we needed to say, ‘Ok, if West Virginia can do it, it’s Oklahoma’s turn.’ As much as we love our students and we love our jobs and we know this is a difficult time for parents and students, in the long run it’s something that we have to do.”