Tulsa school board seat remains vacant, with allegations of candidates' criminal records

After the meeting, board President Stacey Woolley said the board would attempt to have a special meeting as quickly as possible to determine its next steps in filling the position. The District 2 seat has been vacant since Jan. 23, when former board member Judith Barba Perez’s resignation took effect.

Under state law, the board has up to 60 days from that time to fill the seat through the 2024 election cycle.

“There are six of us who have to decide what’s next,” Woolley said.

On Feb. 2, the board voted 4-2 to name Quinton Brown and Sharita Pratt as the two finalists for the seat.

The procedure previously approved by the board to fill the vacancy called for motions and votes to be conducted separately for each of the two finalists, with the candidate who received the most votes named the winner as long as a majority of the board voted in support of that person.

None of the board members made a motion to appoint Brown to the seat. A motion to appoint Pratt to the seat ended in a 3-3 tie, with yes votes from John Croisant, Susan Lamkin and Woolley.

Board member E’Lena Ashley specifically noted that her vote against appointing Pratt was in part due to information that was brought up after the board voted to name the finalists.

Additionally, early on in the meeting, a motion was raised by Jennettie Marshall to remove the vote from the agenda altogether in light of additional information and concerns raised by constituents since the board’s Feb. 2 decision.

That motion failed on a 3-3 tie, as did a motion from Woolley to make any appointment contingent upon successful completion of a criminal background check, similar to those required of teachers and school district volunteers.

The eligibility criteria laid out in state law prohibits anyone who has been convicted of a felony or an embezzlement-related misdemeanor within the last 15 years from serving on a school board. TPS’ eligibility policy mirrors those statutes.

However, during public comment, references were made to both candidates having criminal records.

According to court records, Brown pleaded guilty to a felony in January 2009 and received a deferred sentence.

Additionally, according to documents obtained by the Tulsa World via an open records request, TPS officials banned Brown from the campus of Booker T. Washington High School for six months after a January 2022 interaction with a school employee escalated to the point that Brown had to be asked to leave the building.

According to those documents, after leaving the building, Brown yelled profanities at the school’s security guards and said he “would be coming back” for the officers and to the campus.

Brown’s daughter attended Washington at the time of the incident.

State statutes are silent on whether disciplinary action taken by a school district is grounds for potential disqualification.

When reached Monday, Woolley said she was not sure whether the board could even legally add additional eligibility requirements in their policies beyond what is laid out in state statute.

Brown did not return multiple calls to the phone number listed on his application and refused to speak to reporters after Monday night’s meeting.

Meanwhile, Pratt had a misdemeanor conviction that was ultimately expunged.

After the meeting, Pratt said she was not happy about the board’s decision but would not withdraw her name from consideration.

As the meeting room began to clear out, Pratt referenced the expungement while directly addressing the person who brought it up during public comment, Broken Arrow resident Larry Williamson.

According to Pratt, Williamson showed up at her house uninvited in an attempt to intimate her into withdrawing from consideration. Williamson tried to interrupt Pratt more than once, claiming that he went to her house to talk to her because she did not return his phone calls.

“You, sir, came from Broken Arrow,” she said. “This meeting started at 6:30, so you drove about 45 minutes to the other side of town to Tulsa Public Schools from Broken Arrow Public Schools to do nothing. That’s what you did was nothing, sir. You failed our kids today. You failed everyone’s children.

“I don’t appreciate it. If my daughter was here, … she’d tell you she didn’t appreciate it either.”

Vacancy’s impact

With the District 2 seat still vacant, four items on the night’s consent agenda did not pass thanks to tie votes.

Along with agreements with Northeastern State University and the University of Oklahoma to allow students pursuing graduate degrees in social work and school counseling to get on-campus experience working under district staff, the board did not approve a $750,000 increase to a previously approved contract with three staffing agencies under Hoffman Business Enterprises to help fill vacant support positions around the district.

When asked by the board, Chief Operating Officer Jorge Robles said TPS has 74 vacant custodian positions and 65 vacant child nutrition positions.

“We wouldn’t be in this problem needing bus drivers, custodians and so on if we were paying them a living wage,” Marshall said. “I am sick and tired of outsourcing our funds. We need to take a hard look at what we are doing with the staff we have.”

The fourth consent agenda item that didn’t pass was an agreement with Generation Citizen, a nonprofit organization that provides civics curriculum and accompanying professional development for teachers.

As part of Generation Citizen’s curriculum, students choose an issue they care about, develop a plan to try to address the issue and put that plan into action, including contacting the appropriate elected officials, whether that’s at the local, state or federal level.

That in turn prompted questions about whether the curriculum would be teaching students to be activists and potentially open the door for complaints under House Bill 1775.

Passed in 2021, HB 1775 prohibits teaching that one race or sex is inherently superior to another and that anyone, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.

TPS’ 2022-23 accreditation status was downgraded in July after an attorney with the State Department of Education told the State Board of Education that a professional development session on implicit bias conducted by a third party vendor violated the law.

“Citizenship’s viewed in different ways by different people,” Griffin said. “We’ll have 1775 violations within five seconds of implementing this. We’d have to proceed with great caution on this, as there are no clear guidelines.”

Each of the four items had no votes from Ashley, Griffin and Marshall.

January video: Tulsa school board accepts member’s resignation, sets deadline for applicants