Randy Krehbiel
Tulsa World Staff Writer
Whodunit: The Oklahoma Legislature’s education leadership said Friday that the Oklahoma State Department of Education is responsible for approving teacher bonuses for which the recipients didn’t qualify, not the teachers themselves.
The chairs of the House Common Education Committee, the House Appropriations and Budget Subcommittee on Education and the Senate Education Committee all said the OSDE should take responsibility for the error and stop trying to claw back as much as $50,000 each from nine teachers who received the bonuses despite not qualifying for them.
“If the State Department of Education made this mistake, they have to live with it,” said Sen. Adam Pugh, R-Edmond, chairman of the Senate Education Committee.
As reported by Oklahoma Watch last week, the OSDE approved at least $290,000 in bonuses based on applications that should have been rejected out of hand. The bonuses were for teachers in specific areas or at specific schools who did not teach in Oklahoma last year.
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In each case, Oklahoma Watch said, the applicants reported their employment histories accurately but misunderstood the conditions for receiving the bonuses.
One potential complication is that the bonuses were paid from federal COVID-19 funds. The OSDE and State Superintendent Ryan Walters have already had one adverse federal audit of COVID-19 education funds.
“As a businessman, if I make a mistake, I have to own that,” said Rep. Mark McBride, R-Moore, the House A&B subcommittee chairman for education. “I can’t go back to my customer and say you have to repay me because I made a mistake in our contract. The same should happen with the State Department of Education. If they made a mistake in approving an application, they shouldn’t demand the teacher pay for it.”
Whistling Dixie: Gov. Kevin Stitt sounded a little like a Southern secessionist while trying to explain Republican governors’ promise to send National Guard troops to support Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott.
First, Stitt suggested Guard members might mutiny if federalized by the Biden administration to keep them from interfering with the Border Patrol.
Then he said states can ignore U.S. Supreme Court decisions they don’t like.
Fox’s Steve Doocy raised the possibility of Oklahoma’s and other National Guard units dispatched to the border being nationalized.
President Dwight Eisenhower used such a maneuver in 1957, when Arkansas Gov. Orval Faubus ordered that state’s National Guard to prevent nine Black students from enrolling at Little Rock Central High School.
Stitt indicated that the Guard members might have trouble deciding whether their first loyalties are with their states or the nation.
“The National Guard soldiers are Texans and they’re Oklahomans and they’re Tennessee folks,” Stitt replied. “They’re just Americans. You’d be putting our soldiers in a tough, tough situation to protect their states.
“This is a powder keg worth of tension,” he said. “I think (troops) would be in a difficult situation to protect their homeland or follow what Biden’s saying. I think it would be very interesting.”
A day later, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Stitt about the U.S. Supreme Court decision that Abbott does not have the authority to string razor wire along an international border.
“Well, we all agree that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land,” Stitt said. “And if the Supreme Court gets something wrong — for example, if they try to ban and say that we didn’t have a Second Amendment right to bear arms — I think the Constitution supersedes somebody in Washington, D.C. telling us, you know?”
Housing fund: Stitt approved emergency rules for a new $215 million state housing loan program.
The Housing Stability Program is intended to spur construction of single- and multi-family homes for sale or rent. The Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency, which will administer the program, begins accepting applications Monday.
Campaigns and elections: Democratic House District 72 candidate Michelle McCane was endorsed by the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund.
Feb. 9 is the deadline to register to vote in the March 5 Oklahoma presidential primary.
Applications to be an Oklahoma delegate to this summer’s Democratic National Convention are being accepted through March 8. See okdemocrats.org for details and application forms.
Bottom lines: Oklahoma added about 2,300 jobs in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
— Randy Krehbiel, Tulsa World
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