Ryan Walters has been 'very forthcoming' since House-issued subpoena, lawmaker says

In an unexpected turn, state Rep. Mark McBride expressed satisfaction on Friday concerning information he’s received from state schools Superintendent Ryan Walters after the Oklahoma House of Representatives issued a legislative subpoena last month.

About two weeks ago, McBride, state Rep. Rhonda Baker and House Speaker Charles McCall took the rare step of issuing the subpoena to Walters and the Oklahoma State Department of Education, seeking information which McBride and Baker said they had been asking for for months. They are leaders of House committees that oversee education.

The move caught Walters and his staff off guard. The subpoena set a deadline for 3 p.m. on Jan. 5, which was Friday. The day after Christmas, McBride, R-Moore, said Walters had complied with the subpoena. On Friday, McBride praised the cooperation he’s received from the Oklahoma State Department of Education since the subpoena was issued.

“Honestly, they have been very forthcoming in working with me on stuff,” said McBride, R-Moore. “I know you like to hear me complain, but I can’t complain. That’s all I’ve asked since February of last year — just show me what’s going on.”

State Education Department representatives are scheduled to make a budget presentation during a meeting of the House subcommittee chaired by McBride on Wednesday, “and I am hoping and praying for a nice, easy budget meeting,” he said. “I really hope that we can move past the past and start thinking about improving education for the kids. I think that Wednesday will set the tone for the legislative session.”

Ryan Walters has remained quiet on subpoena

Asked Friday about Walters' thoughts about the subpoena deadline and whether or not Walters felt he sufficiently answered the questions in the document, Dan Isset, a spokesman for the state Education Department, said, "Superintendent Walters will continue to work with Speaker McCall and other legislators to ensure woke indoctrination has no place in Oklahoma classrooms and get back to basics in education."

Walters has said little publicly about the subpoena. He did an interview with Tulsa television station KOKI the day after the subpoena became public, but dodged, then shut off, questions about the subpoena the next day after a regularly scheduled state Board of Education meeting.

“I’ve talked about (the subpoena) for the last couple of days,” Walters said then. “The speaker and I have a great relationship. We’re going to deal with the issues that have been created there, but that’s going to be between the speaker and myself. Again, I have a great working relationship with him.”

Walters didn’t address his relationship with McBride — which often has been rocky — in his answers that day.

What to know about the subpoena

Until Thursday, McBride consistently complained for months about Walters not being forthcoming with information about the state Education Department, which Walters leads as superintendent.

In late October, McBride said he’d been surprised by the resignation of the program manager for grant development and compliance at the state Education Department. Pamela Smith-Gordon, a Walters ally, outlined the reasons for her resignation in a lengthy letter addressed to Walters and the state school board. Her departure was one of a series of resignations since Walters took over the department.

At that time, McBride said, “I really don’t know what’s going on over there. Nobody does. There is some lack of transparency.”

In December, after McBride made another request for information from the state Education Department, McBride said he and Baker, R-Yukon, received a note from Walters’ top advisor, Matt Langston, that read, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” An Oklahoma House employee took a picture of an unknown person slipping the letter under McBride’s office door at the Capitol.

In a response to a subpoena question about Langston’s use of official letterhead and state resources for that letter, Walters replied, “Mr. Langston is the chief policy adviser for the department, and in that role, he is authorized to speak to legislators as an employee. I expect state employees to use state resources for all communications in order to keep a written record of the agency’s functions, and I do not further direct whether they communicate via email, letterhead, or any other means.”

Walters also said in another response that he doesn’t “have any policy of reviewing or pre-approving statements by employees that are authorized to speak to legislators.”

The subpoena also asked for any emails, texts, or other communication between Walters and Langston concerning regarding responses to document requests from McBride and Baker. Walters responded, “I have found no responsive records.”

Walters provided a similar answer to requests for emails sent from Sept. 10, 2020, until the present to his email address with Every Kid Counts Oklahoma “which discuss, compliment, condone or related in any way to the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability.” Walters, who served as the executive director for that nonprofit organization before being elected as state superintendent, said he’s “no longer an employee of that organization and do not have access to that email inbox.”

Another of the subpoena’s questions asked about a $2 million expenditure for “metrics software” and how it was or was not being used by the state Education Department and/or schools. Walters’ response indicated the state Education Department was finalizing the “required documentation” for “agency approval” and would post a request for proposal by the end of December, with “bidder presentations and evaluations” expected to begin in February. The money would go to pay for “a statistical software suite for data management, advanced analytics, multivariate analysis and predictive analytics.”

The subpoena also had sought information about Walters’ efforts to recruit out-of-state teachers and about a teacher signing bonus initiative. In a press release earlier this week, Walters said 523 teachers had been awarded signing bonuses to teach in “critical shortage areas” of pre-kindergarten through third grade and special education.

Of that number, 117 were teachers who held out-of-state licenses and “chose to teach in Oklahoma.” Of those teachers who received bonuses, 76 percent were employed in high-poverty or rural districts, the release said. Applicants committed to teaching for five years to be eligible for the program.

“Innovative solutions like the teacher bonus program are the key to getting Oklahoma schools back on the right track,” Walters said. “Any fake controversy Democrats and Republicans controlled by the teachers’ unions try to drum up will not dim the overwhelming success of this program. Previous small-scale programs have not worked, so we had to disrupt the market clearly and decisively to invest in our high-need areas. We will continue to disrupt the status quo, introduce free market principles in our education system, and unleash to power of innovation to reward our best teachers and help our students achieve great things.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: McBride: Walters, education department are cooperating since subpoena