A group of Oklahoma lawmakers at an annual Tulsa Public Schools legislative breakfast Thursday seemed stumped on solutions to the state’s teacher shortage, one asserting that legislators must find a way to provide funds for teacher pay raises and another saying they would lose that “funding battle.”
The Tulsa-area legislators discussed the issue after hearing a presentation from TPS Superintendent Deborah Gist that included examples of the how the district has struggled to recruit and retain teachers on Oklahoma salaries.
People are also reading…
“Our (teacher) supply is like sand through our fingers,” Gist told the nine legislators. “It is rapidly decreasing. We know that the starting salaries in surrounding states are significantly higher than ours.”
Sen. J.J. Dossett, D-Owasso, seemed confident that pay raises for teachers would not come from a solution at the state Legislature level and asked about other ways lawmakers could help ease the burdens on educators.
Dossett, a former Owasso teacher, said afterward that the political climate in Oklahoma has shown that raising revenue is going to be “very hard, if not impossible,” and so his goal now is to eliminate other burdens, such as high-stakes tests, that may factor into why teachers are leaving the state.
Gist responded that she would be happy to work with legislators to figure out ways to ease the burden on teachers but emphasized the urgent need to do something “dramatically different” to provide funding for teacher pay raises to compete with the salaries offered in surrounding states.
“We can’t keep going like this,” Gist said. “So whatever it’s going to take for you all to work together as a team and figure this out and do something dramatically different, I just implore of you to do that.”
Sen. Gary Stanislawski, R-Tulsa, assured Gist that the Oklahoma House, Senate and governor are “taking the salary situation extremely seriously.”
“There have been and there will continue to be very high-level meetings of how we are going to address that,” Stanislawski said. “We have to do something. We absolutely do. And I’m not sure how we’re going to get there, but it’s a serious problem.”
Stanislawski suggested other solutions to the teacher shortage, saying the state is working with higher education institutions to produce more teachers and that a top reason teachers have cited for leaving has been a lack of administrative support.
Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, asked about alternatives to using state appropriations for teacher pay incentives, such as using bond money or private donations for teacher retention bonuses.
Gist explained that those bond funds are necessary for sustaining school facilities and that the district strives to use funds from the Foundation for Tulsa Schools for innovative projects.
“We try very hard to focus on (private donations) being investments to help us do our work better, and not investments to try to do the work we should be doing anyway,” Gist said.
Sen. Kevin Matthews, D-Tulsa, asserted that legislators working to figure out a way to appropriate money for teacher pay raises “is the only way it is going to happen.”
The annual legislative breakfast was held at Memorial Junior High, 7502 E. 57th St., where school staff and students presented new digital initiatives at the school and Gist reviewed the district’s five-year strategic plan developed last year.
Gist afterward said she wants state lawmakers to know that TPS is “maximizing every dollar we receive from the public.”
“At the same time, I wanted them to understand that the needs we have for additional investment in education − specifically teacher salaries, but not limited to teacher salaries − is enormous,” Gist said. “The needs are great, and it goes beyond what many people have now come to think of as success, which is a $5,000 raise, and I realize that would be a step in a right direction, but it doesn’t solve the problem.”
Other legislators at the breakfast were Reps. Jadine Nollan, R-Sand Springs; Regina Goodwin, D-Tulsa; Glen Mulready, R-Tulsa; Scott McEachin, R-Tulsa; Carol Bush, R-Tulsa; and Monroe Nichols, D-Tulsa.
