What will history say about Oklahoma superintendent candidate Ryan Walters? He aims to find out.

More than two decades later, he still remembers the moment history came alive.

Ryan Walters was a 14-year-old student in McAlester Public Schools when his history teacher captivated him with a compelling tale of President Abraham Lincoln entering the American Civil War.

“I just remember it gave me chills up my spine to think about the foresight, the knowledge and the integrity Lincoln had to go, ‘I’m going to do the right thing even though there are going to be people that aren’t going to agree with me,’” Walters told The Oklahoman during a recent interview. “I thought, boy, this story just came to life. I want to be a teacher that is able to do what he just did to me.”

The Republican candidate for Oklahoma’s top educational office finds himself reflecting on that moment long afterward, not only because it sparked his 10-year teaching career.

Walters, 37, has become an increasingly controversial figure in Oklahoma politics with his culture-war platform, skepticism toward federal education funding and support for private-school vouchers. His consistent messaging against “left-wing indoctrination” and transgender identities caused some to brand him divisive and extreme.

He said he knows not everyone will agree with his opinions. The question, he asks, is what will history say?

“I think it’s important to fight for the things that are right, and I think that as time goes on, history will judge folks and their decision-making and the general public will, too,” Walters said. “I’ve always been inspired by people like (Lincoln), Winston Churchill, George Washington that had to make decisions at times that, again, didn’t get 100% consensus, but what you’re going to do is you’re going to try to do the right thing, you’re going to build a coalition and try to get the right thing done.”

Walters is the GOP nominee to become the state schools superintendent, a position he said he would use to expand school choice options and focus on students as individuals with unique needs, not a general bloc.

He will face Democrat Jena Nelson in the Nov. 8 general election. The winner will lead the Oklahoma State Department of Education and the Oklahoma State Board of Education.

Walters has illustrious teaching career but polarizing political image

Before Walters’ name exploded statewide, he was a 2016 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year finalist at his alma mater, McAlester High School. Tanner Coffee, a 2017 McAlester graduate, said Walters was a role model who was instrumental in guiding him to college.

Coffee, 24, remembers Walters as his favorite teacher and a no-nonsense basketball coach who wore a suit to class every day and whose tests were so difficult students rejoiced to score a B.

“My biggest thing is if you don’t like Ryan Walters, you haven’t had a conversation with him,” Coffee said.

Leaving full-time teaching to shape public policy was “very difficult,” Walters said, but it was an offer he accepted in May 2019 when he agreed to lead the State Chamber's education-focused nonprofit Oklahoma Achieves.

He moved to the Oklahoma City metro area with his wife, Katie, who worked in the medical field in McAlester and now is a part-time teacher at Sonshine School at Memorial Road Church of Christ and a stay-at-home mom to their four young children, two of whom attend public schools. He maintained part-time teaching work at Millwood Public Schools and McAlester, and he now is the CEO of the pro-school choice organization Every Kid Counts Oklahoma.

Walters entered politics in September 2020 when Gov. Kevin Stitt tapped him as his education secretary. The McAlester native announced his campaign for state superintendent in the summer of 2021 and won the GOP nomination in an Aug. 23 runoff.

“I felt like there was an opportunity to help more students,” Walters said. “I felt like there was an opportunity to play a role in changing the system so that it worked better for kids and teachers and parents. But it was a very difficult decision to leave the classroom.”

Today, there’s major disagreement in McAlester over the former history teacher, Coffee said. Walters kept his political opinions private from his students, so Coffee said many were shocked when his views became public.

“There’s a big divide now in our hometown on him,” Coffee said. “There was a lot of people that I don’t think knew what his views were, and I think those are the people that are now on Twitter, the former students who are saying, ‘Oh, I liked him so much in high school. He’s not the same guy anymore.’ He didn’t let you know he was a Republican or a Democrat.”

The difference some perceive between Walters the teacher and Walters the candidate even became a talking point in the superintendent race.

Nelson indicated in an Oct. 25 debate that Walters’ public image is at odds with the person his former students idolized, a notion Walters rejects.

“They told me that you were a great teacher, that you really changed their life,” Nelson said. “My question to you is, win or lose, after this election will you go back to being that man that those students believed in?”

The Republican, who spent much of the debate pushing for more patriotic teaching and describing Oklahoma schools as ground zero of a “civil war” with the far left, said Democrats have lied, spread confusion and tarnished his reputation.

“The reality is my students didn’t know what my political background was because I came to school every day to empower them through the knowledge of history,” he said. “I didn’t tell them what to think. I challenged them to think, and that is what we need more of in the education system.”

He also brushed off as "Democrat lies" the findings of a federal audit of pandemic relief funds he helped oversee.

The U.S. Department of Education found the Stitt Administration failed to put adequate guardrails on an $8 million grant program called Bridge the Gap Digital Wallet. The program gave $1,500 grants to Oklahoma families for educational expenses, but federal auditors found recipients misspent about $650,000 on home decor, Christmas trees and other unrelated items because Walters declined to apply filters on eligible spending.

Although Walters wasn't Stitt's education secretary at the time the initiative began, he was integral in overseeing it through his nonprofit role, auditors said. Walters and the governor's office said the blame for misspent funds lies squarely with ClassWallet, the vendor the state contracted to operate the program.

The candidate’s emphasis on ridding schools of “woke ideology” put him at odds with many educators who say such rhetoric wrongly portrays them as indoctrinators. At the same time, he urged Oklahoma schools to teach America is "the greatest country in the history of the world" and suggested all history teachers in the state should take a patriotic education training course, an idea Nelson said “should raise every red flag in sight.”

Walters set off alarm bells in the education sphere shortly before the Aug. 23 runoff election when he said he would reject funding the federal government provides to Oklahoma schools. He has since walked back his stance, saying he would accept federal dollars only if it benefits academic performance, is transparent and has no "left-wing indoctrination" attached.

Several teachers and school leaders donated to Walters’ Republican runoff opponent, April Grace, and now promote Nelson, the 2020 Oklahoma Teacher of the Year, as their preferred candidate in the general election.

Some polls found Nelson, a political newcomer, in a dead heat or ahead of Walters despite registered Republicans outnumbering Democrats almost 2-to-1 in Oklahoma. Teachers union leaders have endorsed her campaign and spoken at rallies on her behalf.

Norman teacher, Walters at odds over House Bill 1775

Few have been more personally impacted by Walters’ campaign rhetoric than Summer Boismier. The former English teacher resigned from Norman High School in opposition to House Bill 1775, an Oklahoma law banning certain race and gender topics from K-12 schools.

Walters has been a vocal supporter of the law.

Boismier drew national news coverage for posting QR codes in her classroom that linked to the Brooklyn Public Library’s online collection of banned books.

Some conservatives, including Walters, accused Boismier of sharing pornography with students because two books in the library’s collection, “Gender Queer” and “Flamer,” have sexually graphic images. The teacher didn’t specifically recommend either title, which had already been pulled from some Oklahoma school libraries.

Walters publicly called for Boismier’s teaching license to be revoked.

“There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom,” Walters said in a letter posted to social media.

After his declaration, Boismier said she received a stream of vitriolic and threatening messages, some of which included her home address, that prompted her to file a police report and flee her apartment. She packed up her belongings this week to move to New York City where she accepted a position with the Brooklyn library.

Placing schools at the epicenter of divisive messaging, Boismier said, only bleeds Oklahoma of the teachers it should aim to keep — compassionate educators who foster inclusive classrooms.

“Right now, we are hemorrhaging those folks, myself included,” she said. “They are wondering, ‘How long do I continue to fiddle on the deck of this ship before I go for the lifeboats?’"

Despite the firestorm her stand against HB 1775 caused, Boismier said, “I would do it again,” a point Walters said should justify revocation of her teaching license.

However, Walters said the impression he is anti-teacher is “an outrageous lie” perpetuated by his political opponents and teachers unions.

“They’re going to spend all this money to lie about me across the state,” he said. “But you know what? If they’re threatened by someone who’s going to go out and defend parents and defend kids, so be it. I’m not going to back down because they see me pushing for kids instead of their power structure.”

Reporter Nuria Martinez-Keel covers K-12 and higher education throughout the state of Oklahoma. Have a story idea for Nuria? She can be reached at nmartinez-keel@oklahoman.com or on Twitter at @NuriaMKeel. Support Nuria’s work and that of other Oklahoman journalists by purchasing a digital subscription today at subscribe.oklahoman.com.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: What will history say about Oklahoma superintendent candidate Walters?