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A majority of the State Board of Education took the remarkable step of holding their own meeting on Wednesday. Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters, who chairs the board, didn’t attend. Two other members were absent.
The four members in attendance — Mike Tinney, Becky Carson, Chris Van Denhende and Ryan Deatherage — met the minimum needed to make the board’s quorum. They voted to hire Oklahoma City attorney Ryan Leonard as their legal counsel and establish a process to hire a new board secretary.
The board’s most recent attorney, Chad Kutmas, seemed to only represent Walters and not the full board, Van Denhende said.
The governor in February shook up the board, stating he was tired of the drama and wanted the board to focus on educational outcomes. He replaced three members with Tinney, Van Denhende and Deatherage. Then, in April, Stitt filled a vacancy with Carson.
Walters has rebuffed the new board members’ requests to add items to meeting agendas and refused their calls for a special meeting. The agency canceled the regular August meeting.
Van Denhende likened the dynamic between Walters and his fellow board members to hand-to-hand combat.
“Every single day there’s something else that we have to deal with,” he said.
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— Jennifer Palmer
Recommended Reading
- Texan Matt Langston has kept his campaign business running while collecting a six-figure salary as the Department of Education’s chief policy advisor, though he rarely comes into the office. [Oklahoma Watch]
- A full-page advertisement in The New York Times shows what PragerU says is the entirety of Oklahoma’s so-called “woke” test for teachers from left-leaning states. [The Oklahoman]
- Florida plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren, rejecting a practice that public health experts have credited for decades with limiting the spread of infectious diseases. [The New York Times]
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