Bynum meets with Walters to discuss TPS, says he will meet again soon with local school leaders

Bynum said Walters did not share “any definite recommendations” he plans to make regarding Tulsa Public Schools’ accreditation.

“He was very generous with his time on short notice and candidly answered all of my questions,” Bynum said. “Based on my discussion with him today, I will be visiting again with TPS leadership soon.”

Bynum said he had called Walters to see if there was a time they could meet in Oklahoma City and was told Walters would be in Tulsa on Wednesday. “And (he) offered to meet with me today, so we did,” Bynum said.

As he was entering City Hall late Wednesday afternoon, Walters told the Tulsa World he was going inside to discuss Tulsa Public Schools but declined to say with whom.

After the meeting, neither Bynum nor Walters provided details of what they discussed.

But in an interview with the Tulsa World on Monday, Bynum said he would like to see the discussion surrounding Tulsa Public Schools’ accreditation status move beyond personalities and instead focus on what can be done to ensure that Tulsa’s children are getting the best education possible.

He suspects that might be an “unpopular” opinion, but he said “less memes, more talk on educational strategy would be helpful.”

“I think there is a great disservice being done right now by dumbing this down into some sort of Dr. (Deborah) Gist versus Superintendent (Ryan) Walters contest,” Bynum said. “The important thing here is: Are kids in Tulsa schools getting the best education possible? Period. And that is all I care about.

“And the other probably unpopular opinion with probably both folks who would be in those camps is, in talking with them (Gist and Walters), I think they both want Tulsa schools to be doing better. I think they probably have different ideas on how we achieve that, but I really do think both of them want kids in Tulsa schools to be getting a better education.”

Gist is superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools, hired by the locally elected school board. Walters is state superintendent of public instruction, elected in November’s general election. Walters is expected to make his recommendation regarding TPS’s accreditation to the rest of the State Board of Education on Aug. 24, a week after TPS students return to their classrooms.

School system officials have been advised that the state’s accreditation office is recommending that the district as a whole be accredited with two deficiencies for the coming school year.

One deficiency would be due to the late submission of a report. The other, referred to as “lack of internal controls,” is tied to a self-reported embezzlement case involving a now-former TPS administrator’s handling of $364,000 in vendor contracts, which is still under investigation by federal law enforcement officials.

Citing what he claims has been poor management and consistently low academic outcomes for Tulsa Public Schools students, Walters has said he may not go with the accreditation office recommendation and is leaving all options on the table, including not accrediting TPS and allowing the Oklahoma State Department of Education to take it over.

Bynum said he shares Tulsans’ concerns about what that could mean for the community.

“My point is: I hear way too much about ‘Deborah Gist is the woke superintendent who has driven the bus into the ditch,’ and ‘Ryan Walters is the right-wing state superintendent who wants to take everything over and we have to defend Tulsa Public Schools, and do you stand with Tulsa Public Schools?’ Bynum said. “And I think that is personalizing this in a way that is not productive.”

Gist “clearly has a strategy in mind on how to improve outcomes. Like that’s what she was nationally famous for when she was hired,” Bynum continued. “And he (Walters) clearly has some strategy in mind on how we do those. All I’m saying is: I would love for the discussion more to be about that and what the different philosophies are around improving education in Tulsa rather than having it be this battle of personalities, which I don’t think is relevant.”

Bynum said his hope is that Tulsans can get a better understanding of what those visions for the district are rather than “the latest meme about Dr. Gist or Superintendent Walters that you saw on social media.”

“My interest is in … what is his plan for that and what is TPS’ administration plan for that,” Bynum said. “My hope is that then the citizens of Tulsa can get a better grasp of what those two visions are.”

On Tuesday, Gist said TPS has received no guidance from Walters regarding how the school district should address his concerns.

The 2022-23 school year was the first year of a five-year plan adopted by the Tulsa school board after a series of community meetings to solicit feedback about educational priorities.

Although its goals do include increasing students’ reading test scores, the plan’s measuring stick is not the Oklahoma State Testing Program, which is administered annually to students in grades three through eight. Instead, it uses two other exams: MAP and ACCESS 2.0.

Used by more than 9,500 school districts nationwide, MAP is administered three times per year to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. With multilingual students accounting for about one-third of the district’s total enrollment, ACCESS 2.0 is administered annually to assess language proficiency among English language learners.

Asked Monday whether he would push back if Walters’ recommendation is that the state take over Tulsa Public Schools, Bynum said he wants to understand what the state superintendent thinks that would achieve.

To those who would criticize him for not being more outspoken about the issue, the mayor said he is taking the same approach he has in other disputes involving officials in other governments, “which is: I think I’m a more effective advocate if the people that I am trying to advocate to aren’t reading about my quotes about them in the paper or on the internet and that I can be more effective and more open minded from both vantage points if I’m just keeping the communication direct with each side,” Bynum said.

“And I do think I’m in a unique position, because I’m pretty confident I’m one of the few people in the state who is on good speaking terms with both Dr. Gist and Superintendent Walters.”

Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton contributed to this story.

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