Oklahoma Ed. Board: Walters touches on Israel-Hamas conflict, dismisses pronoun requests
The crowd wasn’t as large as it’s been in recent months, but the Oklahoma State Board of Education dealt with a slew of hot-button topics during its monthly meeting on Thursday, including the rejection of pronoun changes, the Israeli-Hamas conflict and an email sent by the Stillwater Public Schools to parents that state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters said circumvented the state board’s authority.
The board voted 5-0 to reject requests from the Moore and Cushing districts to authorize changing the gender or sex designation of students currently in those districts’ student information system. Both districts had received court orders — from Cleveland and Payne counties, respectively — to make those changes, but Walters dismissed those out of hand.
Other board members did not comment during the meeting about the cases.
Walters said there appeared to be “a concerted effort” to try and “threaten, bully and intimidate schools” concerning transgender issues.
“We now have a second issue of a left-wing, activist judge issuing a ruling to a district directly using almost identical language,” Walters said. “I believe we’ve got to continue to stand in the way of these radical leftist Biden judges that are sitting here trying to dictate this to our schools."
An education department attorney, Bryan Cleveland, said the court orders were illegal.
Walters addresses Israeli-Hamas war
During his superintendent’s report, Walters waded into the Israeli-Hamas conflict, complaining without offering examples about “some of the reaction in higher ed” to the war and saying he’s received complaints that “students and professors” were drawing an equivalency between Israel and Hamas. He said he wanted to ensure Oklahoma’s K-12 curriculum would teach that Israel is a nation-state and Hamas is a terrorist group to offset what he called the “indoctrination” by those in higher education.
After the meeting, Walters was asked about calling Hamas a terrorist group just a few months after referring to a teachers’ union as a “terrorist group” and how he would equate those two entities. He again expressed his thoughts about Hamas but didn’t mention his teachers’ union comments in his answer.
Stillwater email criticized by Walters
An email to parents by Stillwater Superintendent Uwe Gordon also drew Walters’ ire. He said he had received multiple complaints about its content from Stillwater parents in recent days.
In the email, Gordon said its intent was to provide district patrons “with clear information regarding recent Oklahoma State Department of Education policy changes” in light of new rules approved by the board that require districts to report their pronoun policy and to report other personal disclosures to parents. In a statement, the Stillwater district said: “The message links directly to the OSDE rules and indicates the district’s intention to comply with those rules.”
School districts were required by the Oklahoma State Department of Education, the statement said, "to disclose to a child’s Parent(s) or guardian(s) any information known to the School district or its employees regarding material changes reasonably expected to be important to Parent(s) regarding their child’s health, social, or psychological development, including Identity information.'"
Although the Stillwater email seemed to be an attempt to comply with Education Department rules, Walters called it “their attempt to circumvent this board’s rules around notifying parents” about what is going on with their children. “This will not be tolerated. … Parents have spoken loudly and very clear that they want to know what’s going on with their children’s education. They want a seat at the table and they are the ultimate deciders.”
In other business, the board:
Heard an update from Tulsa Public Schools interim Superintendent Ebony Johnson and other district officials about progress the district is making in improving reading scores in the district. Walters said the district’s “level of engagement is unique and refreshing” but again warned that “we need to see the results.” Board member Kendra Wesson said “it’s beautiful to see” the hard work being put in by Tulsa district leaders. After former Superintendent Deborah Gist resigned following a public spat with Walters, the state board approved the district’s accreditation with deficiencies and is requiring district officials to make a monthly report to the board on its progress on addressing those deficiencies.
Voted to suspend the teaching certificate of Wetumka teacher and coach Brent McGee, pending a proceeding for revocation and other action. A former student of McGee's, Casey Yochum, told the board he had been sexually molested when McGee was teaching and coaching in Noble.
Welcomed a new member in Zachary Archer, who’s also a member of the Hammon school board. Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Archer to the post earlier this month. Archer voted on all of the agenda items on Thursday.
Heard Walters say he’ll be rolling out an initiative regarding “comprehensive discipline reform” in schools in the near future. Walters didn’t reveal any details but said a “common complaint” he hears is about “lack of discipline in the classroom” and how it affects learning.
Approved attorney Cara Nicklas, who works for an Edmond law firm, to represent the board in legal matters.
Rescheduled its Nov. 16 meeting to Nov. 30 and approved 2024 meeting dates. No change was made in the location of the meetings, which still will be in the meeting room of the Education Department’s Oliver Hodge Building. People began lining up overnight to try and secure one of the few public spots in the meeting room. Although the crowd in the spillover areas in the building wasn’t as large as in past months, Johnson and her group from the Tulsa schools had to wait in an overflow area before their presentation, instead of being able to sit in the meeting room.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Walters at Ed. Board: Israel-Hamas war addressed, pronouns passed over
